Priscilla Alden (, c. 1602 – c. 1685) was a noted member of Massachusetts's Plymouth Colony of Pilgrims and the wife of fellow colonist John Alden (c. 1599 – 1687). They married in 1621 in Plymouth.

Biography

Priscilla was most likely born in Dorking in Surrey, the daughter of William and step-daughter of Alice Mullins. She was only seventeen when she boarded the Mayflower. She lost her father, step-mother 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. John Alden and Priscilla Mullins were probably the third couple to be married in Plymouth Colony. William Bradford's marriage to Alice Carpenter on August 14, 1623 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 found 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. The exact location of her grave is unknown, but there is a marker honoring her.

Longfellow's poem

She is known to literary history as the unrequited love of newly widowed Captain Miles Standish, the colony's military advisor, in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1858 poem The Courtship of Miles Standish. According to the poem, Standish asked his good friend John Alden to propose to Priscilla on his behalf, only to have Priscilla ask, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" Longfellow was a direct descendant of John and Priscilla, and based his poem on a romanticized version of a family tradition although, until recently, there was little independent historical evidence for the account. The basic story was apparently handed down in the Alden family and published by John and Priscilla's great-great-grandson Rev. Timothy Alden in 1814. Scholars have recently confirmed the cherished place of romantic love in Pilgrim culture, and have documented the Indian war described by Longfellow. Circumstantial evidence of the love triangle also exists. Miles Standish and John Alden were likely roommates; Priscilla Mullins was the only single woman of marriageable age. The families of the alleged lovers remained close for several generations, moving together to Duxbury, Massachusetts, in the late 1620s.

The Alden children

Priscilla and John Alden had ten children, with a possible eleventh dying in infancy. It is presumed, although not documented, that the first three children were born in Plymouth, the remainder in Duxbury. The children were:

Legacy

Prescott W. Baston's Sebastian Miniatures produced pewter figurines of the Aldens.