Susanna Jackson White (Winslow)

 It wasn't until 2017 that anyone knew the lineage of Susanna White, mother of Peregrine White, who came to North America on the Mayflower. The discovery of some letters have filled in a great deal of her history, and probably cleared up which William White she was married to. Peregrine is purported to be the first European child born on this continent to survive. (We won't touch on speculative history of the Etruscans and Chinese and Vikings today.) At any rate, he's the first we have records of.

I am a direct descendant of Peregrine. One of my bucket list goals is to try to create a book (not for publication, just for me) with stories of what I know of a lot of the people in my ancestral line. So tonight, I just took some of the new information about Susanna and collected it with some other info.

Susanna Jackson White (Winslow)

b. 1592 d. after 1654

parents: Richard Jackson, Mary (Pettinger) Jackson

Susanna grew up at Scrooby Manor in Nottinghamshire of Robin Hood fame. Scrooby Manor was the home of the Brewsters. He was a Separatist (those not in agreement with the Church of England) leader. The Brewster’s portion of the Manor was destroyed, but this is the part in which the Jacksons lived.

Around 1608 the family fled from persecution to Amsterdam and joined the Separatist congregation there.

In Holland, she married William White, of Wisbech, Isle of Ely, Cambridgeshire, England. (This is probably the correct William White, although the Bradford list has him coming aboard the Mayflower as a merchant from London. And there is a third William White adding more confusion.)

They had one son while in Holland, named Resolved, who would have been five years old on the Mayflower passage. Susanna was pregnant, and in her third trimester, on the voyage. There were two other pregnant women on board. Oceanus Hopkins was born during the trip.

On anchoring in Plymouth harbor (Massachusetts) on November 9, 1620, the passengers realized there was no way to build homes before winter. They spent the first winter on board the Mayflower. Peregrine (Pilgrim) White was born some time in November of that year.

All but four of the thirteen women who came on the Mayflower died before the next summer. Susanna was one of the survivors. However, her husband William died in February, 1621. He was one of the signers of the Mayflower Compact.

She married Edward Winslow in May, 1621, the first recorded marriage in Massachusetts. They had five children, four of whom survived to adulthood. Edward’s first wife had died in March.

Undoubtedly, Susanna was one of the people who helped prepare the first Thanksgiving feast.

Her then husband, Edward, wrote home to England that the Wampanoag with Chief Massasoit and about 90 men (plus women and children? or 90 natives total? We don’t know) gathered to “entertain and feast” for three days. Venison, wildfowl, and corn are mentioned. Another account by Bradford adds turkeys to the menu. But there were certainly no wheat rolls. Any bread would have had a corn base, and stuffings for the meat, if any, were probably herbs and onions, possibly with nuts added.

This painting was printed in the Smithsonian Magazine, 2011. It is less fanciful than many other portrayals of the feast. At least this one doesn’t have the natives in the dress of plains Indians! However, there are six Pilgrim women in the picture, and we know there were only four left. It would be nice if someone would try to paint something more authentic.

Susanna died between 1654 and 1656, based on wills in which she is mentioned. Her grave is in the Winslow Cemetery in Marshfield, Massachusetts. She was between 62 and 64 years of age.

This purports to be a photograph of a painting of Susanna. It is possible she had a portrait made because there are existing paintings of Edward Winslow and of their son and daughter-in-law Josiah and Penelope Winslow. [edited- I doubt this is a likeness of Susanna. A Puritan woman would have continued to keep her head covered even if she would have been about 50 years old. And, the hairstyle to me suggests early 1800s. The dress is harder, but all suggestions of women's clothing of the period and religious affiliation show some kind of shawl or shoulder covering.]

It has long been my contention that I come from a long line of tough women. I rest my case.

I hunkered down and worked hard today. I wrote over 1200 words (a lot in a book that requires research), and edited.

See The Pedigree