William White (Mayflower passenger)

According to genealogist Charles Edward Banks, his surname is one of the dozen most common in England and his baptismal name one of the four most frequently bestowed in that period.

It is believed that if William White had been a member of the Leiden congregation, his name would have appeared in Bradford's work for that section, but it does not.

[2][6][7] William White came on board the Mayflower with his pregnant wife Susanna, son Resolved, then about five years in age and two servants.

This, combined with a lack of proper rations and unsanitary conditions for several months, attributed to what would be fatal for many, especially the majority of women and children.

After several days of trying to get south to their planned destination of the Colony of Virginia, strong winter seas forced them to return to the harbor at Cape Cod hook, where they anchored on 11/21 November.

With the death of her husband Susanna White, with newborn Peregrine and five-year-old Resolved, became the only surviving widow out of the many families who perished that winter.

[8][13] In May 1621, Susanna White became the first Plymouth colony bride, marrying Edward Winslow, a fellow Mayflower passenger whose wife had perished on 24 March 1621.

[15][16] And though deceased, in the 1623 Division of Land, White received five acres (akers) "lyeth behind the forte to the little ponde."

White's sons Resolved and Peregrine were both listed with their step-father Edward Winslow and mother Susanna in the 1627 Division of Cattle, and moved with their parents to Marshfield in 1632.

[8][17] About 1638, the Winslows moved with Susanna's sons Resolved and Peregrine White, to Green Harbor, now called Marshfield, Massachusetts.

Cromwell required Winslow head a joint award reparations commission to assess damage caused by Danish ships.

When his will was written in 1654 as resident of London, the document stated that he left his New England property to his son Josiah "hee (sic) allowing to my wife a full third parte thereof for her life also" so it is probable that his wife did not follow him to London.

In a letter that Edward Winslow wrote in 1623 to "Uncle Robert Jackson", he provided news of Susanna, her late husband William White, and her children.

[5] William White married Susanna Jackson ca 1614[1][22] (a marriage to Anna Fuller was disproven years ago)[23] and had two sons.

He was buried in Cole's Hill Burial Ground in Plymouth, likely in an unmarked grave as with most from the Mayflower who died that first winter.

Edward Thompson was the first Mayflower passenger to die, as reported by William Bradford, after the ship's arrival at Cape Cod, probably on 4 December 1620.

Several memorials to him and others from the Mayflower who were the earliest to die exist today at Provincetown on Cape Cod.