page_title: William Bradford (governor)
section_title: Family
hierarchical_section_title: William Bradford (governor) / Family
context_page_description: William Bradford was an English Puritan separatist originally from the West Riding of Yorkshire in Northern England. He moved to Leiden in Holland in order to escape persecution from King James I of England, and then emigrated to the Plymouth Colony on the Mayflower in 1620. He was a signatory to the Mayflower Compact and went on to serve as Governor of the Plymouth Colony intermittently for about 30 years between 1621 and 1657. His journal Of Plymouth Plantation covered the years from 1620 to 1646 in Plymouth.
context_section_description: William Bradford married:
  Dorothy May in Amsterdam, Holland on December 10, 1613. Their marriage record indicates that she was 16 years old and was from Wisbech in Cambridgeshire. The record also notes a Henry May, who may have been her father. William and Dorothy had one son.
  Her death and memorial: On December 17, 1620, Dorothy fell from the deck of the Mayflower into the icy waters of Cape Cod Harbor, where the ship was anchored, and drowned.  Her husband was with others on an expedition ashore and only learned of her death on his return to the Mayflower.
  She was one of four Mayflower passengers who died between December 4/14 and 8/18, 1620, including Edward Thomson, Jasper More (age 7 years), and James Chilton. William Butten was the first to die in Provincetown Harbor, dying on November 16. They are all commemorated on two cenotaphs in Provincetown, one at Winthrop Street Cemetery and one at the Mayflower Passengers Who Died at Sea Memorial. Their burial places ashore are unknown and may have been unmarked in those very early days after the Mayflower landing.
  The death of these five persons was just a precursor of the deaths to come, consuming about half the Mayflower company in that first bitter winter of 1620–1621.
  Alice (Carpenter) Southworth, age about 32, in Plymouth on August 14, 1623. She had arrived on the ship Anne some weeks earlier. Alice was the widow of Edward Southworth.  She was one of five daughters of Alexander and Priscilla Carpenter of Wrington, co. Somerset in England, all being of Leiden about 1600. Alice brought two sons to the marriage: Constant, born about 1612, and Thomas, born about 1617. Alice and William had three children.  She died in Plymouth on March 26, 1670 and was buried on Burial Hill in Plymouth near her husband's stone.
  Child of William and Dorothy Bradford:
  John was born in Leiden, Holland, about 1617. He married Martha Bourne by 1650 but had no known children. He died in Norwich, Connecticut some time before September 21, 1676.
  Children of William and Alice Bradford:
  William was born on June 17, 1624 in Plymouth and died there on February 20, 1703/04. He was buried on Burial Hill in Plymouth.
  William married:
  1. Alice Richard after April 23, 1650 and had ten children. She died in Plymouth on December 12, 1671.
  2. Sarah (____) Griswold about 1674 and had one son.
  3. Mary (Atwood) Holmes about 1676 and had four children.
  Mercy was born before May 22, 1627 and may have been dead before her father's 1657 will, as she was not mentioned. She married Benjamin Vermayes on December 21, 1648 in Plymouth but had no known children.
  Joseph was born about 1630. He married Jael Hobart on May 25, 1664 in Hingham and had three children. He died in Plymouth on July 10, 1715.
caption: Bradford is honored on the 1920-21 U.S. commemorative Pilgrim Tercentenary half dollar, designed by Cyrus Dallin
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