William Bradford Added to Mayflower Families Fifth Generation Descendants, 1700-1880

The Pilgrims at Plymouth. Northrop, Henry Davenport, 1836-1909.
Public Domain in the United States, courtesy of Wikimedia.

We have added the William Bradford volume to the searchable database of authenticated Mayflower Pilgrim genealogies, Mayflower Families Fifth Generation Descendants, 1700-1880. This update adds 570 pages, 11,000 records, and over 32,000 searchable names in the following volume:

  • Bradford, William (Vol. 22)

This database is being constructed from the General Society of Mayflower Descendants (GSMD) very well-known series of books Mayflower Families Through Five Generations: Descendants of the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth, Mass., December 1620 which document the first generation of descendants of the Pilgrims. Through our partnership with GSMD, American Ancestors is delivering this database with a full index of the fifth-generation descendants, and their children, coupled with the page images for those people.

William Bradford was born in 1590 in Austerfield, England. He became interested in Separatist religious beliefs as a young man. William married Dorothy May in Amsterdam in 1613. They traveled on Mayflower together, leaving behind their son, John, who would join them on a later ship. Bradford served as Governor of Plymouth Colony for 31 terms, succeeding John Carver after his death in 1621. Bradford kept extensive journals relating the experience of the Pilgrims and had the most extensive library of first generation New Englanders. After Dorothy fell off the deck of Mayflower and drowned in the Provincetown Harbor, Bradford married Alice (Carpenter) Southworth in 1623, with whom he had 3 children. He died in 1657. This biography is also available on our Mayflower 2020 site here.

This database index includes birth, baptism, marriage, death, and deed records for these individuals, and where available, the names of parents and spouses. We thank our volunteers for all their efforts in bringing this newly searchable data to you!

This update is made possible by the invaluable efforts of our growing team of volunteers, including; Jeanne Brown, Fran Danico, Kathleen Hash, Nell Nies, Margaret Parker, Rich Wood, and David Anderson. We genuinely appreciate their dedication. If you are interested in joining the team, please contact Bianca Renzoni, Database Services Volunteer Coordinator bianca.renzoni@nehgs.org.

Please note: This database is available to Individual-level and above NEHGS members only. Consider membership.