A few years after they married, Mayflower passengers John and Priscilla Alden became parents to Elizabeth, perhaps the first European female born in New England. Two decades later they witnessed her marriage to William Peabody on December 26, 1644. The newlyweds settled north of Plymouth in William’s home of Duxbury, Massachusetts.
Elizabeth was described as tall, beautiful, dignified, and “a woman of great character and fine presence." William was a respected church leader, as well as surveyor and town clerk.
When the last of their thirteen children left home, the Peabodys moved to Little Compton, Rhode Island, which was then part of Plymouth Colony. William became their first town clerk, keeping that position so long into his old age that they hired an assistant to ensure that he kept accurate records.
Ten years after William was gone, Elizabeth also died. She was one of very few colonial women to have a published obituary, confirming her importance in the community. A Boston newspaper praised her as "exemplarily virtuous and pious, and her memory is blessed." She had at least eighty grandchildren when she died, and over 550 great-grandchildren. Living into her early nineties, Elizabeth saw so many new generations in her family that, before she died, one of her own granddaughters became a grandmother.
Among the several writers who were inspired by Elizabeth’s family is her own descendant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who wrote of the romance of Elizabeth’s parents in the classic American poem, “The Courtship of Miles Standish.”
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"Yea, thou shalt see thy children’s children, and peace upon Israel."
(Psalms 128:6; 1599 Geneva Bible)
"Also I will cause thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries: and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed"
(Genesis 26:4; 1599 Geneva Bible)
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