BETTY ALDEN
THE FIRST-BORN DAUGHTER OF
THE PILGRIMS
BY
JANE G. AUSTIN
AUTHOR OF “STANDISH OF STANDISH,” “A NAMELESS NOBLEMAN,” “DR.
LE BARON AND HIS DAUGHTERS,” “THE DESMOND HUNDRED,”
“NANTUCKET SCRAPS,” ETC.
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1891
Copyright, 1891,
By JANE G. AUSTIN
All rights reserved.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
TO
MY DEAR COUSINS
MARSTON AND MARY WATSON
AND THEIR
HILLSIDE
WHERE BETTY ALDEN HAS BEEN SO PLEASANTLY CRADLED
DURING THE PAST YEAR
This Story of her Life and Times
IS AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED
Plymouth
Michaelmas, 1891
PREFACE.
Everybody has sympathized with Mr. Dick who could not keep KingCharles’s head out of his memorial, and I hope everybody willsympathize with me who have been unable to keep Betty Alden in this hermemorial so constantly as I wished and she deserved. But as the wholeincludes the less, her story will be found threaded through that of herpeople and her times in that modest subordination to which the livesof her sex were trained in that day. He who would read for himself thestory of this noble woman, the first-born daughter of the Pilgrims,must seek it through ancient volumes and mouldering records, until atLittle Compton in Rhode Island he finds upon her gravestone the lastaffectionate and honorable mention of Elizabeth, daughter of John andPriscilla Alden, and wife of William Pabodie. Or in lighter mood, hemay consider the rugged rhyme tradition places in her mouth upon theoccasion of the birth of her great great grandchild:—
One word upon a subject which has of late been a[Pg vi] good deal discussed,but by no means settled, and that is, the burial place of MylesStandish. In the absence of all proof in any such matter, traditionbecomes important, and so far as I have been able to determine, thetradition that some of the earliest settlers were buried in thevicinity of a temporary meeting-house upon Harden Hill in Duxbury ismore reliable than the tradition that Standish was laid in an oldburying ground at Hall’s Corner which pro