Biography
Priscilla was most likely born in Dorking in Surrey, the daughter of William and Alice Mullins. Priscilla was a seventeen-year-old girl when she boarded the Mayflower. She lost her parents and her brother Joseph during the first winter in Plymouth. She was then the only one of her family in the New World, although she had another brother and a sister who remained in England. She spun wool and flax for the colony, taught children, and helped with the cooking.
John Alden and Priscilla Mullins were likely the third couple to be married in Plymouth Colony. William Bradford’s marriage to Alice Carpenter on August 14, 1624, is known to be the fourth. The first was that of Edward Winslow and Susannah White in 1621. Francis Eaton’s marriage to his second wife, Dorothy, maidservant to the Carvers, was possibly the second.
Priscilla is last recorded in the records in 1650, but oral tradition states that she died only a few years before her husband (which would be about 1680). She lies buried at the Miles Standish Burial Ground in Duxbury, Massachusetts. While the exact location of her grave is unknown, there is a marker honoring her.
Read more about this topic: Priscilla Alden
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—André Maurois (1885–1967)