James (Mrs.) Chilton "Mayflower 1620"

James Chilton was born about 1556, probably in Canterbury, Kent, England, according to the supplied family-tree notes. He is identified there as the son of Lyonell or Lionel Chilton and an unnamed mother. The profile heading gives his birth as about 1563, but the narrative evidence that he was aged 63 in 1619 and 64 in 1620 is more consistent with a birth about 1556.

Chilton lived for much of his life in Canterbury, where he worked as a tailor and was admitted as a citizen in 1583. He married by 1586, although no record naming his wife has been found. A formerly published identification of her as Susanna Furner is said in the supplied notes to have been disproved by research published by Michael Paulick in 1999 and 2007.

James and his wife had children baptized in Canterbury before moving, probably about 1600, to Sandwich, Kent. Their known children included Isabella, Jane, Joel, Mary, Elizabeth, James, Ingell or Angel, Christian, another James, and a younger Mary. Several of the children apparently died young. Isabella later married Roger Chandler in Leiden, and Ingell or Angel married Robert Nelson there. The younger Mary, baptized at Sandwich in 1607, survived to travel on the Mayflower and later married John Winslow in Plymouth.

In 1609, James Chilton's wife, recorded only as the wife of James Chilton, was brought before the Archdeaconry Court at Sandwich with others for attending the private burial of Andrew Sharpe's child. The accused parishioners criticized the Church of England burial ceremony as “popish.” In June, three of those charged, including Mrs. Chilton, were excommunicated. No later English records for the family are noted, and the family may have left for Holland soon afterward.

Although relatively few Leiden records mention the Chiltons, a 1619 deposition places James there with his daughter Angel. On the night of April 28, 1619, they were walking home when a group of about twenty boys identified them as Remonstrants and attacked them. James was struck in the head with a stone and knocked down; town surgeon Jacob Hey treated him. The supplied notes state that the attack was not directed specifically at the English, but that religious unrest in Leiden may have contributed to the English Separatists' wish to leave.

In 1620, James Chilton, his unnamed wife, and their youngest daughter Mary sailed on the Mayflower. The supplied notes describe him, at about age 64, as the oldest known passenger on that voyage. After the ship reached the Cape Cod area and lay off Provincetown Harbor, he died aboard ship. The narrative gives his death date as December 8, 1620, while the profile heading gives January 11, 1621. His wife died sometime during the winter of 1620/21. Their daughter Mary survived, married John Winslow in Plymouth between 1623 and May 22, 1627, and had ten children. Isabella and her husband Roger Chandler later arrived in Plymouth Colony in 1632.