Alden, Priscilla (c. 1602–c. 1685)
Alden, Priscilla (c. 1602–c. 1685)
American colonist who arrived on the Mayflower. Name variations: Mollins or Mollines. Born Priscilla Mullens or Mullins in Dorking, Surrey, England, around 1602; died around 1685; daughter of William Mullens (a shopkeeper); married John Alden (1599–1687, an American colonist and barrelmaker), probably in 1622; children: at least 11.
Priscilla Mullens came to America on the Mayflower. (The rest of her family, as well as 14 of the 18 mothers who shared the ocean crossing,
died within a few months of arrival in that first, rugged winter of the Plymouth Colony.) One of the first passengers to be married in the colonies, Priscilla wed John Alden, probably in 1622 or 1623. The Aldens lived in Plymouth until around 1631; they then moved north to settle the town of Duxbury. Descendants of John and Priscilla Alden include William Cullen Bryant, President John Quincy Adams, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who wrote of Priscilla and John Alden in The Courtship of Miles Standish. The site of the Alden home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, has been preserved.