page_title: John Alden
section_title: Establishing Plymouth Colony
hierarchical_section_title: John Alden / Establishing Plymouth Colony
caption_attribution_description: English: Recreation of Plimoth Plantation at Plymouth, Massachusetts
context_page_description: John Alden was a crew member on the historic 1620 voyage of the Mayflower which brought the English settlers commonly known as Pilgrims to Plymouth Colony in present-day Massachusetts. He was hired in Southampton, England, as the ship's cooper, responsible for maintaining the ship's barrels. Although he was a member of the ship's crew and not a settler, Alden decided to remain in Plymouth Colony when the Mayflower returned to England, opting to remain with the Pilgrims as a colonist. He was a signatory to the Mayflower Compact.
  He married fellow Mayflower passenger Priscilla Mullins, whose entire family perished in the first winter in Plymouth Colony. The marriage of the young couple became prominent in Victorian popular culture after the 1858 publication of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's fictitious narrative poem The Courtship of Miles Standish. The book inspired widespread depictions of John and Priscilla Alden in art and literature during the 19th and 20th centuries.
  Alden was one of Plymouth Colony's most active public servants and played a prominent role in colonial affairs. He was annually elected to the Governor's Council nearly every year from 1640 to 1686.
context_section_description: After exploring the inner shoreline of Cape Cod, the colonists chose to settle in Plymouth. The site offered a good harbor, several fresh water springs, and a large hill overlooking the harbor (which they would later name Burial Hill) suitable for a fort. A tribe known as the Patuxet (part of the Wampanoag peoples) had settled the site and cleared a large area of land for planting corn. By the time the Mayflower arrived, the Patuxet tribe had been wiped out by plagues, likely as a result of contact with English fishermen.
  During their first winter in Plymouth, most of the settlers fell ill and half died of disease. Priscilla Mullins (John Alden's future wife) lost her entire family—her father William, her mother Alice, and her brother Joseph. The fifty colonists who survived began building a fort atop Burial Hill and small wooden houses on either side of a "street" now known as Leyden Street, named in 1823 after the town in Holland where the Pilgrims lived for several years. A small plot of land at the foot of Burial Hill near the top of the street was designated for John Alden. He built a primitive house in this location and lived there for about seven years with his wife Priscilla and his growing family. The site of Alden's first house in Plymouth was marked in 1930 with a boulder and bronze plaque placed by the Alden Kindred of America. A recreation of this house stands today at Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum which replicates the original Pilgrim settlement.
caption: A view of the recreated Plimoth Plantation, which includes a replica of John Alden's house seen second from the left
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