Priscilla Mullins & America’s First Love Triangle

Our 9th Great Grandmother, on the Bacon family line, was our first female European ancestor to arrive in North America! Priscilla MULLINS (1602-1685), most likely heralding from Dorking, Surrey¹, was a member of the Leiden contingent of Pilgrims. They sailed from their self imposed exile in the Netherlands to Southampton to join the expedition. They had originally planned to reach America by early October using two ships, but three false starts and complications meant they could use only one, Mayflower.

The Mayflower, 1620: Faith, Frostbite, and Flirting?

In September 1620, Priscilla Mullins sailed from England aboard the Mayflower as a young woman of about 18. She survived the horrific first winter in the Plymouth Colony of New England that claimed her parents and brother — making her one of the very few unmarried adult women in the fledgling colony².

As the new immigrants struggled to draw up fences and fend off sickness, the undeniable truth was: Priscilla Mullins was one of the colony’s most eligible women. And hearts did quietly flutter.

Imagine crossing the Atlantic Ocean in damp, cramped quarters, seasick and shivering, only to arrive on rocky shores and discover —surprise!— half your shipmates won’t make it through the first winter. Priscilla did survive, hardy and resolute.

At the same time, John Alden, the ship’s cooper, and Miles Standish, Plymouth’s military captain — were both navigating the very different perils of survival and romance. Standish was seasoned in battle but hopeless with love, whereas Alden was practical and dependable but maybe too polite for his own good.³

In the documented history, we know John and Priscilla did marry in 1622 or 1623 and went on to raise ten children in Plymouth and then Duxbury. Priscilla’s family, sadly, died that first winter. Beyond these basics, the real documentary record largely falls silent on love triangles — but legends live on!

The Triangle Emerges

Here’s where the tale gets juicy — or at least as juicy as 17th-century Pilgrim etiquetteand19th-century poetry allow:

Captain Miles Standish

A military captain, brave and battle-ready, but with all the romantic finesse of a musket. He was a leader in the new colony and someone who folks trusted with the defense of their lives.

However Standish was painfully awkward in courtship and allegedly fell for Priscilla. So much so that he didn’t dare tell her himself. Instead, he asked John Alden — his roommate and trusted friend — to deliver the proposal on his behalf.⁴

Cooper John Alden

John was thecooper(barrel-maker) aboard theMayflower, whose job was shaping oak staves, forging hoops, and drilling bung holes — not exactly poetry and romance, but solid and dependable.

So John went with his Standish’s message! He shouldered his courage (and maybe some skepticism) and knocked on Priscilla’s door to speak for Standish. But as the family lore passed down suggests — and Longfellow later dramatized — something unexpected happened.⁵

Priscilla Mullins

Priscilla listened to Alden’s words — meant for Standish — and them, with a smirk and twinkle straight out of a classic period rom-com, asked:

“Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” — the line famously preserved in The Courtship of Miles Standish.⁶

Good heavens! Pilgrim flirtation was happening!

According to family tradition (made famous by Longfellow and retold by descendants across generations), Priscilla wasn’t interested in the captain. Instead, she had evidently noticed Alden all along — his modest manner, his easy laugh, his clear sincerity — and just wanted him to say it straight. The story captivated Alden families so deeply that they passed it down for centuries.

The Legend (aka What Longfellow Told Us)

Two centuries later, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who just happened to be a descendant of John and Priscilla, turned the Pilgrim settlement into the stage for an unforgettable romantic comedy called The Courtship of Miles Standish, a Victorian re-imagining of Pilgrim Love Island!

Let’s unpack the triangle with a mix of legend and facts. According to the tale:

💘 Miles Standish

Smitten but tongue-tied, asks his friend John Alden to go speak to Priscilla on his behalf. He allegedly loved Priscilla — a brave captain smitten with a courageous young woman. In Longfellow’s version, he doesn’t quite manage to woo her himself.

❤️ John Alden

He starts out as a messenger and dutifully delivers the Captain’s proposal, but in the telling, he ends up listening to his own heart and — accidentally — falling for Priscilla himself.

💃 Priscilla Mullins

Priscilla? She sounds sensible, direct, and — above all —demanding verbal honesty, not romantic heraldry. In Longfellow’s romantic framing, she chooses John precisely because hespeaks directly. Priscilla hearing John’s stilted words, replies with sharp wit and surprising directness:

“Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?”— a line Longfellow forever etched into American folklore.

Cue the collective gasp of 19th-century readers. Think of this moment as the Pilgrim version of “Tell me you love me without saying you love me.”Only with more sea salt and fewer candles.

Who Won Whom?

So who “won her hand”?

John Alden married Priscilla Mullins, sometime after the first winter — likely by 1623, and they went on to have aboutten children— a sizable brood for the era.⁷

Miles Standish, for his part, eventuallydidmarry too (to a woman named Barbara) and stayed an important figure in the colony, but theStandish → Priscillastory fades quickly outside of family legend and poetry.⁸

Whether Priscillachosehim, or the tradition was shaped later by descendants and storytellers (like Longfellow), is up for debate. But in the legend sheactively participatesin her own matchmaking — definitely speaking up rather than being passively chosen.

Truth vs. Legend

It’s important to stress:

• The love triangle storyis not provenby 17th-century historical documents— meaning wedon’t have contemporary letters or diariesconfirming Standish ever asked Alden to propose for him.⁹
• Thefirst known written versionof this romance appears over 190 years later, in an 1814 book by Rev.Timothy Alden, and was laterromanticizedby Longfellow’sThe Courtship of Miles Standish(1858).¹⁰
• Historians today often say the story reflectsfamily lore and later storytelling traditions— not documented fact.¹¹
• Miles Standish was a widow, not a bachelor, at the time! His first wife died very shortly before Alden and Mullins married so if he really did want Priscilla for his wife, he must not have waited long.¹²

Even so, how could a tale with that charming question —“Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?”—notcapture the imagination of generations?

Epilogue —Romance, Resilience, and Really Good Dialogue

In Longfellow’s poem, beyond the famous line, the narrative often treats Priscilla as emblematic of Pilgrim virtue — “modest and simple and sweet” — even if real life was likely less theatrical and more about survival in a harsh world. So let’s award the triangle this much:

• Standish loved Priscilla(if the story is to be believed) — and maybe never confessed it outright.
• Alden loved Priscilla — enough to mess up his courage for his friendand still end up in it himself.
• Priscilla lovedclarityand maybeJohn— because she married him — and chose tosay sowith wit and confidence.

They lived long enough to shape a new community in New England, raise large families, and become the undeniable core of one of early America’s best-loved legends.

If you want a flashy dramatic script version of this — with all the Pilgrim slapstick and understated flirtation you can handle — just say the word! Puritan Pilgrim Love Island is in the works… So in our humorous recasting:

Priscilla survived the Atlantic, outlived her family, and took emotional fire from two of Plymouth’s most eligible bachelors — only to deftly tell them: “I’ll have the dependable one who speaks up, thank you very much.”

Family Tree

With each generation the number of ancestors will double and, by the time we reach the Mayflower, there can be up to 2048 9th Great Grandparents. The reverse is also true and there are millions of descendants of Priscilla MULLINS & John ALDEN. Our direct line descends from two of the couples children, the first daughter, Elizabeth, and the ninth, Ruth.

• John ALDEN (1598-1687) & Priscilla MULLINS (1602-1685)
  • Elizabeth ALDEN (1623-1717) & William PABODIE (1618-1707)
    • Martha PABODIE (1650-1712) & William FOBES (1650-1712)
      • Constance FOBES (1686-1771) & John LITTLE (1683-1767)
        • Lemuel LITTLE (1724-1798) & Penelope EAMES (1732-1803)
          • Luther LITTLE (1757-1842)& Hannah Pittey LOVELL (1771-1826)
            • Olive LITTLE (1813-1855) & Ebenezer Lord ADAMS (1805-?)
              • Sarah Little ADAMS (1847-1931) & Silas Edwin BACON (1854-1929)
                • Silas Coleman BACON (1879-1959) & Sarah Lenella HAYDEN (1876-1953)
                  • Mary Hayden BACON (1912-1998) & Robert MORRIS (1911-1989)
                    • Direct line…
  • Ruth ALDEN (1669-1725) & John BASS (1632-1716)
    • Mary BASS (1669-1725) & Christopher WEBB Jr (1663-1690)
      • Sarah WEBB (1688-1755) & Samuel ARNOLD (1688-1742)
        • Joseph ARNOLD (1718-1760) & Mary BUTTS (1726-1779)
          • Moses ARNOLD (1751-1788) & Sarah VINTON (1755-1830)
            • Samuel V ARNOLD (1780-1858) & Rebecca M Soper (1779-1869)
              • Rebecca T ARNOLD (1807-1893) & Charles D HAYDEN (1805-1876)
                • Samuel W HAYDEN (1834-1896) & Mary B SWAN (1842-1899)
                  • Sarah Lenella HAYDEN (1876-1953) & Silas Coleman BACON (1879-1959)
                    • Mary Hayden BACON (1912-1998) & Robert MORRIS (1911-1989)
                      • Direct line…

Footnotes

1. Mayflower Interactive Passenger List, Mayflower400 ↩︎
2. Priscilla’s Story, alden.org ↩︎
3. Priscilla Alden, Wikipedia ↩︎
4. Priscilla Alden, Wikipedia ↩︎
5. Rekindling the John, Priscilla, and Myles love triangle, plymouthindependent.org ↩︎
6. The Courtship of Miles Standish, https://poets.org/poem/courtship-miles-standish ↩︎
7. John Alden and Priscilla Alden, Encyclopedia Britannica ↩︎
8. Priscilla Alden, Wikipedia ↩︎
9. Priscilla Alden, Wikipedia ↩︎
10. Rekindling the John, Priscilla, and Myles love triangle, plymouthindependent.org ↩︎
11. Rekindling the John, Priscilla, and Myles love triangle, plymouthindependent.org ↩︎
12. In Defense Of The Legend Of John Alden, Priscilla Mullins, And Myles Standish, Five Smiling Fish ↩︎

References

• Coopers Had the Colonists Over a Barrel: 18th Century Barrel & Cask Production in America, Revolutionary War Journal
• John Alden and Plymouth’s First Love Triangle, Family Search
• The Courtship of Miles Standish V. The Sailing of the Mayflower, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Priscilla Mullins, Mayflower History
• John ALDEN, American Ancestors
• Priscilla Mullins Alden and the Search for a Dress in Pieces, Early Americanists
• Myles Standish, Encyclopedia Britannica