♂George Morton

George Morton^W (about 1587 – June 1624) was a merchant among the English at Leiden in Holland who crossed to Plymouth Colony^W in the Anne^W in 1623 and died there the next June, not a full year after he came ashore. His son Nathaniel, who became the colony’s historian, later wrote of him as “a pious, gracious servant of God”. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007) by two separate lines of descent, through his daughter Sarah Morton (born about 1620) and his son Ephraim Morton (born about 1623).

Leiden

He was “George Morton, merchant, from York in England” when he was betrothed at Leiden in 1612, with his brother Thomas Morton standing with him. His bride, Juliana Carpenter, was a “maid from Bath in England”, accompanied by her father Alexander Carpenter and her sister Alice. They married at Leiden on 22 July 1612. Five children followed: Nathaniel, Patience, John, Sarah and Ephraim, the youngest of whom is said to have been born on the voyage to New England in 1623.

George did not go with the first settlers in 1620, but he stayed close to their venture. He is said to have been the man who, in London in 1622, published the letters and journals the first colonists sent home from Plymouth, the book known as Mourt’s Relation^W, the first printed account of the settlement.

Plymouth

In 1623 he sailed for Plymouth in the Anne, most likely with Juliana and the children. Nathaniel later named Timothy Hatherly and George Morton as two of the principal passengers in the ship. When the colony cast lots that year for the land of those who had come in the Anne, George Morton and Experience Mitchell were granted eight acres together.

He died at Plymouth in June 1624. Nathaniel’s history of the colony, New England’s Memorial, describes him as a man “very faithful in whatsoever public employment he was betrusted withal”, “laboring to still the discontents that sometimes would arise amongst some spirits” in the hard first years of the plantation, who died “not surviving a full year after his coming ashore”.

By 1627 Juliana had married Manasseh Kempton, and in the division of the colony’s cattle that year she and four of the children, Nathaniel, John, Ephraim and Patience, were joined to the lot of Governor William Bradford^W, while Sarah was placed with Francis Eaton’s company.

Lines of descent

The two lines run separately through the Mortons of Plymouth and meet again in James Morton (1739–1810): his father, James Morton (1714–1745), descended from Ephraim, and his mother, Mehitable Churchill (1716–1797), from Sarah.

Notes

His origin and birth

The Leiden betrothal, in the English rendering printed in a 1909 history of Maine families, calls him a merchant “from York in England”. That history adds that he was born about 1585 at Austerfield in Yorkshire, “it is believed”, and repeats Joseph Hunter’s suggestion that he was the George Morton unaccounted for in the family of Anthony Morton of Bawtry. Robert Charles Anderson’s Great Migration Begins gives his origin only as Leiden and places his birth by about 1587, from the date of his marriage. No English baptism is known for him.

The date of the marriage

Anderson gives the marriage at Leiden as 22 July 1612 (new style), citing the Leiden record printed in the Mayflower Descendant. The 1909 history prints the banns as published on 16 July 1612 and the marriage as taking place on “23 July 2 Aug. 1612”, that is, in both calendars. Anderson’s own sketch of Thomas Morton dates the marriage 6 July 1612.

Mourt’s Relation

The credit for the book rests on the 1909 history, which says it was issued by him in London in 1622 and made up of letters and journals from the chief colonists “either addressed or intrusted to George Morton”, his own share in the writing being possibly no more than the preface. Anderson’s sketch of him does not mention it.

The Anne and his death

The 1623 list of land for the passengers of the Anne pairs “George Morton & Experience Michell” and does not name his wife or children; the family’s passage with him rests on the 1909 history and on their being at Plymouth by 1627. His death in June 1624 is from his son’s New England’s Memorial and from Thomas Prince’s chronology, as Anderson cites them. The 1909 history’s story that Ephraim was born on the ship is not in Anderson, who gives Ephraim’s birth only as by 1623. Anderson also notes that George was granted a share in the Dartmouth lands long after his death, presumably for his heirs.