♂Isaac Allerton

Isaac Allerton (about 1586 – February 1659) was a merchant of the Leiden separatist congregation who crossed on the Mayflower in 1620, served for years as assistant to the governor of Plymouth Colony^W, and became one of the busiest traders in early America, turning up in the records of almost every colony on the Atlantic seaboard, from Newfoundland to the Caribbean. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his daughter Mary Allerton (1617–1699).

Leiden and the Mayflower

He was born about 1586; a deposition he gave in 1639 states his age as about 53. His origin in England is not known. On 4 November 1611, at Leiden in Holland, he married Mary Norris, “single woman from Newbury in England”, and the couple lived there with the English congregation that later sailed to New England. They had a son, Bartholomew, and daughters Remember and Mary, and buried a child at St Peter’s church in Leiden early in 1620.

William Bradford’s list of the Mayflower passengers names “Mr. Isaac Allerton and Mary his wife, with three children, Bartholomew, Remember and Mary. And a servant boy John Hooke.” His wife gave birth to a stillborn son aboard the ship in Plymouth harbour in December 1620 and died that first winter, on 25 February 1621; the servant boy died too.

Plymouth

In early 1621, after the death of Governor John Carver, William Bradford was chosen governor, and, in Bradford’s words, “Isaac Allerton was chosen to be an assistant unto him who, by renewed election every year, continued sundry years together”. He made frequent voyages to England in the 1620s and 1630s on his own business and the colony’s. Between 1623 and 1627 he married Fear Brewster (1600–1634), a daughter of Elder William Brewster (1564–1644); they had a son, Isaac, who graduated from Harvard in 1650, and a daughter, Sarah. Fear died in 1634.

Merchant of many colonies

From the 1630s his trade took him far beyond Plymouth. He kept houses at Marblehead, in New Amsterdam^W and at New Haven, and his business can be followed in the records of Newfoundland, New Netherland, New Sweden, Virginia, Barbados and Curaçao. A modern compiler describes him as “one of the busiest and most complicated men in early New England” and notes that no one has yet surveyed his business affairs in full. In 1635 he gave his houses and fishing stages at Marblehead to his son-in-law Moses Maverick, the husband of his daughter Remember. By 1644 he had married a third wife, Joanna, probably the “Mrs. Swinnerton” who had been granted land at New Haven.

He died at New Haven^W in February 1659, between a court appearance on 1 February and the taking of his inventory on 12 February. The inventory came to £118 and included “the dwelling house, orchard & barn with two acres of meadow”.