Thanksgiving by the numbers

Ignoring the earlier (1607) Jamestown, Virginia settlement which was an entirely different dynamic, the English settlement of North America beginning with the Mayflower at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620 has always been noted as markedly different from other European incursions and settlements on the North American continent.  Elsewhere conquest and commerce were the driving force and the participants were largely or exclusively male.  Women came later; families much later; civilized settlements of families last of all.  

The Pilgrim, and later Puritan, settlements in New England were religious certainly, but were also the migration of families permanently into new lands.  Whole families arrived together at the very beginning, sometimes representing a significant proportion of the towns and counties they left behind.  Indeed, the British Crown was stuck with a dilemma.

On the one hand, the throne was strident to the point of brutality in their repression of religious non-conformers, those who did not adhere with great consistency to the teachings of the Church of England.  The Crown also did not want, indeed could not afford, a loss of population at a time of many monarchical rivalries in Europe.  The English monarchy did not want Puritans but also did not want them to leave.

And the government made it difficult for the Pilgrims to leave through imposition of taxes and regulations and port controls.  

Family-based emigration meant that the emigrants were non-representative and distinct.  They were wealthier, better educated, more literate, more skilled and more varied in their skills than any other comparable European settlement group of the time.  In addition to their experience as a religious movement, many of them already had experience living in a foreign land and experience with community self-governance.  

Or at least that is the stereotype.  Is it the reality?  Were families more prevalent?  Its always worth checking the numbers.

Apparently so.  There were 102 Pilgrims on the Mayflower.  69 of them were traveling in families.  And that is probably an undercount.  We know who traveled in family units with shared family names but some number of the single men were almost certainly relatives but with different names (a nephew of a sister for example).  

The first year of settlement, as is widely known, was brutal, landing on an unfamiliar and unanticipated shore much farther north than intended, much later in the year than planned and with much less time to prepare for what turned out to be a hard winter.  Of the 102 Pilgrims who landed, only 51 survived into the new year to celebrate the first Thanksgiving in the fall of 1621.

The winnowing was especially heavy among the adult women.  As best I can calculate, of the 102 Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock in November 1620, 51 remained alive to celebrate that first Thanksgiving in 1621.

Of the 102 Pilgrims who arrived:

54 were adult men, 29 of whom died that first winter.  They had a death rate of 54%.

21 were adult women, 13 of whom died that first winter.  They had a death rate of 62%.

28 were children, 7 of whom died that first winter.  They had a death rate of 25%.

69 of the 102 passengers traveled as members of 23 families, constituting 67% of the passengers.  32 of the 69 died that first winter, with a death rate of 46%.

Of the 18 married women, 13 died (72%) that first winter, only 5 survived.  Among the survivors was my 10th great-grandmother, Mary Brewster.   

12 of the fifteen married women who had children with them on the voyage died, a death rate of 80%.  

9 of the fifteen men who children accompanying them on the voyage died, a death rate of 60%. 

 

Those numbers are horrific.  However, the 25% death rate among children is striking for how low it is in comparison to the total.  It is even more striking because three of the seven child deaths were three very young siblings (the More children) who were traveling without their parents on the ocean journey.  In other words, the survival rate (84%) of children actually in families was dramatically higher than for everyone else.

While the death rate among women is distinctly higher than for men, it is, in the scheme of things, not especially surprising given the realities of the time.  A good portion of women were already pregnant when they boarded the Mayflower, (indeed, Oceanus was born at sea and two or three more soon after arrival).  The stress of the journey in combination with food shortages, little shelter, harsh environment, and poor communal hygiene would have made pregnant women especially vulnerable.  

Of the 23 families, 5 came through with no one dying.  In five instances, everyone died.  In six families, both parents died leaving five orphaned children between the ages of 12 and 18.  

Mayflower: Voyage, Community, War by Nathaniel Philbrick is an especially good account of the voyage and the first fews years of survival on these far distant shores from anything those Pilgrims had ever known or experienced.  

For all the trials and tragedies of those first years, it is striking to read the biographies of the survivors.  Time and again you have some later dying at 50, 60, 70 years of age and with five, ten and fifteen children.  Dark tribulations preceded dramatic outcomes.  

I write this in memory of my mother Virginia Latting Bayless who passed away this Spring.  She was a keen genealogist all her years.  In the past decade, I took on more of the research for her and, as in this case, the sort of analysis which sheds light on realities which are sometimes hard to comprehend.  We would have had a good conversation about all the details and what they meant.  I do and will miss those calls with her.