John Carver (Mayflower passenger)
| John Carver | |
|---|---|
| 1st Governor of Plymouth Colony | |
|
In office 1620–1621 |
|
| Preceded by | None |
| Succeeded by | William Bradford |
| Personal details | |
| Born | before 1584 England |
| Died | April 1621 Plymouth Colony |
| Resting place | Coles Hill Burial Ground |
| Nationality | English |
| Spouse(s) | Mary de Lannoy m. 1609, d. 1609 Katherine White m. before 1615 - d. May 1621 |
| Children | 2 (predeceased both parents) |
| Occupation | Deacon |
| Profession | Governor |
| Religion | Church of England |
John Carver (before 1584 – 1621) is credited with writing the Mayflower Compact, was its first signer, and was the first governor of New Plymouth Colony. Carver was a Leiden Separatist instrumental in organizing the Pilgrim's Mayflower voyage in 1620, on which he was a passenger, and which resulted in the creation of Plymouth Colony in America.
The ancestry of John Carver is unclear and makes research difficult as “John Carver” is a common enough name to have and many persons of the late-16th and early 17th centuries in England are associated with that name. A good candidate location for his ancestry may be the parish of Doncaster in Yorkshire, northern England. The author Charles Edward Banks thought so in 1929 but may have chosen the wrong Carver family to give credence to his research. The area did have a number of parishes that would eventually comprise the Separatist church whose members escaped to Holland and later to America.
Author Jeremy D. Bangs does note that on February 8, 1609 John Carver and his first wife Mary de Lannoy, of L’Escluse, France were members of the French Walloon church in Leiden. Like the Separatists, who came to Holland from England about 1607/1608, the French Huguenot community was fleeing adverse events in their homeland. Mayflower passenger Francis Cooke and his French wife Hester Mahieu were also members of the French church in Leiden as was Philip de Lannoy (Delano), arriving in Plymouth in November 1621 on the Fortune. He may have been a relative of Carver’s wife Mary. John Carver was a deacon in Leiden about 1609 at about age 25, and is believed to have been born sometime before 1584. Leiden records of St. Pancras Church state that Carver buried a child on July 10, 1609. Sometime shortly after the death of the child, Carver's wife Mary died.
John Carver married secondly Katherine White, who was a prominent member of the Leiden English Separatist church. She was originally of Sturton in Nottinghamshire, eldest daughter of Alexander White. After his marriage to Katherine, Carver became much more involved in the Leiden church, making close associations with the leaders of the church, especially the Separatist pastor John Robinson, husband of Katherine's younger sister Bridget. The exact marriage date of John Carver and Katherine White is not known, but she, under the name "Katherine Carver," was witness to a betrothal in Leiden on May 22, 1615, so the marriage was sometime prior to that date.
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