HANGING OUT WITH PILGRIMS November 1621

Well, dear Friends, out there...I often think of you and wonder who and where you are...but enjoy knowing strangers read my blog.

 I have decided it might take the rest of my life to finish DON QUIXOTE. So as I was contemplating the chapter XXII, when Don Quixote was lowered by rope down into a cave...and while resting on a crevice he had a dream or an awake experience. I found myself being lowered into  past history to 1621; then I had a dream or an awake experience hanging out with Pilgrims. It was so amazing. I did not go to Plymouth as the old lady I am today but as a 18 year old girl. I  hoped to spend the whole three days of festivities there (as Don Quixote spent three days in the Montesinos cave.) 

Once I opened my eyes in Plymouth I was thrilled at  being present at the first Thanksgiving. I did not hear anyone use the word Thanksgiving but Harvest Celebration Day.

The Thanksgiving meal had not been served yet, when I arrived. 
I found myself in conversation with Priscilla Mullins. 

Around 19 years old, she was so pretty and yet so strong. Life had been hard since she first set sail on the Mayflower. The trip was arduous; people were seasick. The ship was dark. It stank. The ship was not comfortable for passengers because it was actually a cargo ship used to transport wine. 
They arrived in December  and then during a devastating winter of  bitter cold and snow, half the members who arrived died from sickness. Priscilla was the only one of her family who lived through it. As she shared her life with me, there was nothing self pitying about her.I asked her where she lived since her family died. She answered that she lived with several families. So she had no definite home....

I asked Priscilla if she had any duties. She said that she spun wool and flax, taught children and helped with the cooking. For the Harvest Feast she plucked the fowl and got covered in feathers before the job was done!!

I told Priscilla that I thought we were having a Thanksgiving Day celebration.

 She said that this was a Harvest Day celebration the way they had back in England at the end of harvest. She said they had such a big harvest their leaders wanted them to do this. 

Priscilla continued, "Of course we are a religious people and are very  thankful. But this particular event is more like a party
with games, secular songs and feasting." 

I didn't tell Priscilla that in 2012 Americans still remember it as the first Thanksgiving in our country!!! 

She could not know that 242 years later a president named Abraham Lincoln would declare a day of Thanksgiving as a regular holiday for our country along with Christmas. Even though the Civil War was going on, he wanted us to give "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens." 


We stood outdoors talking. The feasting and fun and games would take place outdoors. I can't tell you how moved I was to be there. 

 While we were talking other girls walked up to us. One was Mary Chilton, in her mid teens, thought to be first passenger  to set foot ashore from the Mayflower.

Interesting that I heard that handsome John Alden was the first to step ashore. Who knows? 

I was so glad to meet her. Then came Constance Hopkins. Her half brother was the only baby born on the Mayflower!! She and Mary were younger than Priscilla and me. But life had given them more maturity than you would expect from their years. With Constance was Elizabeth Tilley. She also lost her parents, an uncle and aunt during that bitter winter. She was taken in by the Carver family. I heard there was a teen age servant girl, Dorothy; but I did not get a chance to meet her.

There were some teenage boys, but I only saw them and didn't have conversation with anyone except the girls.


 I knew already what they could not know in the future.. I had read from history that they all would marry and have large families. These girls would live roughly to the age I am now.

Of course one marriage was most famous because of the Longfellow poem. Everyone knows Priscilla married John Alden. He did not talk with us. But I admired him from afar  as he stood and talked with some other men.
                                

If Priscilla was already in love with him I could not tell. 

John Alden was a Mayflower cooper and was only hired for a year; but he decided to stay on in this new place...and the rest is, well "history!"

  
Of course Priscilla could not yet know about this house where she and John would live one day.

I enjoyed being young again. I was about to start my freshman year in college, and Priscilla could not read!! Yet she was so much wiser than I ever have been or will be.  

The girls left to help the adult women to start bringing out the food. I looked around and saw there were more Indians there than Pilgrims. There were only about 53 Pilgrims left.  There was a general feeling of good will between the two groups. I didn't talk with anyone except the teenage girls so far.

THE 53 PILGRIMS AT THE FIRST THANKSGIVING :

4 MARRIED WOMEN : Eleanor Billington, Mary Brewster, Elizabeth Hopkins, Susanna White Winslow.
5 ADOLESCENT GIRLS : Mary Chilton (14), Constance Hopkins (13 or 14), Priscilla Mullins (19), Elizabeth Tilley (14 or15) and Dorothy, the Carver's unnamed maidservant, perhaps 18 or 19.
9 ADOLESCENT BOYS : Francis & John Billington, John Cooke, John Crackston, Samuel Fuller (2d), Giles Hopkins, William Latham, Joseph Rogers, Henry Samson.
13 YOUNG CHILDREN : Bartholomew, Mary & Remember Allerton, Love & Wrestling Brewster, Humility Cooper, Samuel Eaton, Damaris & Oceanus Hopkins, Desire Minter, Richard More, Resolved & Peregrine White.
22 MEN : John Alden, Isaac Allerton, John Billington, William Bradford, William Brewster, Peter Brown, Francis Cooke, Edward Doty, Francis Eaton, [first name unknown] Ely, Samuel Fuller, Richard Gardiner, John Goodman, Stephen Hopkins, John Howland, Edward Lester, George Soule, Myles Standish, William Trevor, Richard Warren, Edward Winslow, Gilbert Winslow.

William Bradford, Of Plimoth Plantation :
In the original 17th century spelling
"They begane now to gather in ye small harvest they had, and to fitte up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health & strenght, and had all things in good plenty; fFor as some were thus imployed in affairs abroad, others were excersised in fishing, aboute codd, & bass, & other fish, of which yey tooke good store, of which every family had their portion. All ye somer ther was no want.  And now begane to come in store of foule, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees).  And besids water foule, ther was great store of wild Turkies, of which they tooke many, besids venison, &c. Besids, they had about a peck a meale a weeke to a person, or now since harvest, Indean corn to yt proportion.  Which made many afterwards write so largly of their plenty hear to their freinds in England, which were not fained,  but true reports."

In my next blog entry I will tell you about the Indians who came to the first Thanksgiving celebration. I was just fascinated as I watched these 90 men so different from the Pilgrims in many ways.
.love, annie in memphis


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