Susanna (Fuller) White, wife of William, and sister of Dr. Fuller (?),
was apparently somewhat younger than her first husband and perhaps
older than her second. She must, in all probability (having been
married in Leyden in 1612), have been at least twenty-five at the
embarkation eight years later. Her second husband, Governor
Winslow, was but twenty-five in 1620, and the presumption is that
she was slightly his senior. There appears no good reason for
ascribing to her the austere and rather unlovable characteristics
which the pen of Mrs. Austin has given her.
Resolved White, the son of William and Susanna White, could not have been
more than six or seven years old, and is set down by Goodwin and
others - on what seems inconclusive evidence - at five. He was
doubtless born at Leyden.
William Holbeck is simply named as "a servant" of White, by Bradford.
His age does not appear, but as he did not sign the Compact he was
probably "under age." From the fact that he died early, it is
possible that he was too ill to sign.
Edward Thompson is named by Bradford as a second "servant" of Master
White, but nothing more is known of him, except that he did not sign
the Compact, and was therefore probably in his nonage, unless
prevented by severe sickness. He died very early.
Master William Mullens (or Molines, as Bradford some times calls him) is
elsewhere shown to have been a tradesman of some means, of Dorking,
in Surrey, one of the Merchant Adventurers, and a man of ability.
From the fact that he left a married daughter (Mrs. Sarah Blunden)
and a son (William) a young man grown, in England, it is evident
that he must have been forty years old or more when he sailed for
New England, only to die aboard the ship in New Plymouth harbor.
That he was not a French Huguenot of the Leyden contingent, as
pictured by Rev. Dr. Baird and Mrs. Austin, is certain.
Mrs. Alice Mullens, whose given name we know only from her husband's
will, filed in London, we know little about. Her age was (if she
was his first wife) presumably about that of her husband, whom she
survived but a short time.
Joseph Mullens was perhaps older than his sister Priscilla, and the third
child of his parents; but the impression prevails that he was
slightly her junior, - on what evidence it is hard to say. That he
was sixteen is rendered certain by the fact that he is reckoned by
his father, in his will, as representing a share in the planter's
half-interest in the colony, and to do so must have been of that
age.
Priscilla Mullens, whom the glamour of unfounded romance and the pen of
the poet Longfellow have made one of the best known and best beloved
of the Pilgrim band, was either a little older, or younger, than her
brother Joseph, it is not certain which.
