Ancestry
There are several theories regarding Alden's ancestry. According to William Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation, he was hired as a cooper in Southampton, England, just before the voyage to America. In The English Ancestry and Homes of the Pilgrim Fathers, Charles Edward Banks suggested that John was the son of George and Jane Alden and grandson of Richard and Avys Alden of Southampton. However, there are no further occurrences of the names George, Richard, and Avys in his family which would have been unusual in the seventeenth century.
Another theory is that John Alden came from Harwich, England, where there are records of an Alden family who were related by marriage to Christopher Jones, the Mayflower’s captain. In this case, he may have been the son of John Alden and Elizabeth Daye.
Read more about this topic: John Alden
Famous quotes containing the word ancestry:
“The Democratic Party is like a mule. It has neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity.”
—Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901)
“The Democratic Party is like a mule. It has neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity.”
—Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901)
“I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule.”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)