♂Richard Warren

Richard Warren^W (died before March 1637) was a passenger on the Mayflower in 1620 and one of the first settlers of Plymouth in Plymouth Colony^W. In December 1620 he was one of ten men who took the ship’s shallop along the coast of Cape Cod, came under attack at the place they named the First Encounter, and found the harbour where Plymouth was built. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his daughter Mary Warren (about 1610–1683).

The voyage and the exploring party

Nothing certain is known of his birth or parents. Mourt’s Relation^W, the account of the colony’s first months printed in London in 1622, counts him among “three of London”, the only clue to where he came from. Richard Warren probably married Elizabeth Walker at Great Amwell, Hertfordshire, on 14 April 1610. When he sailed on the Mayflower in 1620, Elizabeth and their five daughters, Mary, Anna, Sarah, Elizabeth and Abigail, stayed behind; in William Bradford’s^W list of the passengers, “his wife and children were lefte behind, and came afterwards”. His name stands among the signers of the Mayflower Compact, drawn up at Cape Cod on 11 November 1620.

With no place yet chosen to settle, ten volunteers set out in the shallop on 6 December 1620, in “very cold & hard weather”: among them Myles Standish^W, John Carver, Bradford and Edward Winslow, with Warren, Stephen Hopkins and Edward Dotey as the “three of London”. At Nauset they were attacked with arrows. None of them was hurt, though coats hung in their barricade were “shot through and through”, and they called the place the First Encounter. On 11 December they sounded the harbor of Plymouth, found it “fitt for shipping”, and marched inland to find “diverse cornfields & little running brooks”. They carried the news back to the ship, and the colony was planted there.

Settler at Plymouth

Warren came through the first winter, and in the division of land of 1623 among those “which came first ouer in the May-Floure” he received his own lot. That year Elizabeth and the five girls joined him, crossing on the Anne^W. Two sons, Nathaniel and Joseph, were born at Plymouth after she arrived. When the colony divided its cattle on 22 May 1627, the ninth lot fell to “Richard Warren & his companie”: his wife Elizabeth, the two boys, the five daughters and four members of the Billington and Soule households. Their share was one of the four black heifers that had come in the Jacob, “the smooth horned Heyfer”, and two she-goats.

He was also one of the Purchasers, the settlers who bargained to buy out the colony’s London backers and so became the owners of its land. He died before he had paid his part, and Elizabeth completed the bargain after him.

Death

He died at Plymouth, most likely in 1628. He was alive at the cattle division of May 1627; by October 1633 the court spoke of a homestead lot “granted formerly to Richard Warren, deceased”, and on 7 March 1636/7, when it made his widow a Purchaser in his place, it called him “Mr Richard Warren, deceased”. Bradford later wrote that he “lived some four or five years and had his wife come over to him”, and that his five daughters were “all married and living, and have many children”.

Notes

His origin

Mourt’s Relation’s phrase “three of London” is the only statement of where he came from. The Mayflower Society’s compiled genealogy of the Warren family, Mayflower Families Through Five Generations, volume 18, part 1, says that it is all that is known of his origin.

His marriage

The marriage of Richard Warren and Elizabeth Walker is known from the FamilySearch collection England Marriages, 1538-1973, an abstract of the Great Amwell parish register, which gives the couple as married there on 14 April 1610, with the bride’s name spelled Wallker. The will of Augustine Walker of Much Amwell, dated 19 April 1613, names his daughter Elizabeth, wife of Richard Warren, and her three children, written Marey, Ann and Sarey Warren; that will is known only from a transcript. The identification of this couple with the Mayflower Richard Warren and his wife was made in The American Genealogist, volume 78 (2003), pages 81-86. Older Mayflower genealogies said that his wife’s maiden name and origin were unknown.

The year of his death

The family tree carries his death as before 7 March 1636/7, the court that made his widow a Purchaser and called him “Mr Richard Warren, deceased”. The year 1628 is the one given by the compiled genealogy. Bowman, in The Mayflower Descendant, volume 3, page 50, reckons it from the widow surviving him forty-five years. The compiled genealogy also abstracts a deed of 28 September 1629 bounding land on that of the “widow Warren”. The court’s own records call him deceased by 28 October 1633, and they enter a “Widow Warren” in the tax list of 25 March 1633.