The Black Sheep of the Mayflower - Supplemental Episode #2

 

The Mayflower was a cargo ship built to travel the short distance between England and France. It was a garbage choice to carry 102 passengers and 30 crew across the Atlantic to the New World and yet the pilgrims traveling to establish a new colony had little choice in the matter. Betters can't be choosers.

Before disembarking in the New World, 41 Mayflower passengers (the adult men) signed the Mayflower Compact, agreeing to abide by the Puritan-inspired laws of the new colony. After I finished recording the episode, I discovered John Billington was the 26 signature on the document.

John and Eleanor Billington were an argumentative couple that none of the other colonists liked. Their teenage sons John, Jr. and Francis have been called America's first juvenile delinquents. Francis discharged a firearm on the Mayflower, near several power kegs, and nearly blew up the ship.

Myles Standish, the military leader of the colony, brought John Billington up on insubordination charges, the first criminal proceedings in Plymouth Colony - yet another proud moment in my family's history.

After being allowed off the Mayflower, John, Jr. got lost in the woods for nearly a week. When a rescue party finally found him, he was with a group of 100 native Nanset who had found they boy, bedecked him with beads, and given him a ceremonial knife.

William Bradford became the second governor of the colony when the original governor unexpectedly died - probably from an aneurism. Bradford was decidedly anti-Billington and documented problems with Billington in multiple letters.

In 1630, John Billington was accused of murdering John Newcomen. We know next to nothing about Newcomen except that he arrived sometime after the original Mayflower passengers and dies of a gunshot wound to the shoulder. Billington was tried for Newcomen's murder and a jury that already didn't like him, convicted Billington on what would be considered very circumstantial evidence today and sentenced him to death.

A few short days after Billington's quasi-show trial he was hanged, becoming the first European confided of murder in colonial America and the first person executed there. Guilty or not, Grandpa John makes for an interesting story in my family tree!