Dorking, Surrey, England is the birthplace of William
Mullins, a passenger on the ship Mayflower in 1620. He brought his family to the New World –
including his wife Alice, and his teenaged children, Joseph and Priscilla
Mullins. Yes, that Priscilla! The one who married John Alden, and made
famous by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his 1858 poem The Courtship
of Miles Standish. This terribly romantic poem is pure fiction, but also
quite a bit of famous Americana.
We know a lot about Priscilla, but not too much about the
rest of the Mullins family. Two older children stayed behind in England (William
and Sara). Priscilla survived the first
winter in New England, but both her parents and her brother died during the “starving
time”. William dictated his will to
Governor John Carver before he died, and it was written down. We know some
details about his life from that will, which still survives today, including the
fact that William Mullins was a cobbler, and he brought a large number of shoes
(21 dozen shoes and 13 pairs of boots!) on board the Mayflower. Alice, his
wife, has no known maiden name.
I was lucky enough to visit Dorking in 2017 with a tour
sponsored by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. We saw the house
where the Mullins family lived, which is marked by one of England’s famous blue
plaques seen at historic sites. Dorking
is about 35 miles from London.
Just recently a local artist created a fantastic art
installation for Dorking. This is a fantastic weathervane installed near the William
Mullins house. The ship Mayflower is
featured on the weathervane, the William Mullins house, as well as sea birds,
and sea creatures such as a whale and an octopus. What a wonderful tribute to
the Mayflower, as well as a fun thing for descendants and Mayflower cousins to
visit! It is one of the most elaborate
weathervanes I have ever seen!
This new weathervane is entitled “Mayflower Weathervane” and was created by the Fire and Ice Gallery. It was installed in March 2023.
A blog post about the new Mayflower weathervane:
Caleb Johnson’s page about William Mullins: http://mayflowerhistory.com/mullins-william
Wikipedia’s article on William Mullins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Mullins_(Mayflower_passenger)
My blog post about visiting Dorking in 2017: https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2017/10/along-pilgrim-trail-william-mullins-of.html
A “Weathervane Wednesday” post about another weathervane (a “weathercock”)
I spotted while in Dorking: https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2017/11/weathervane-wednesday-ancestral-church_29.html
Click here to see more than 500 more Weathervane Wednesday
posts: https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/search/label/Weathervane%20Wednesday
To cite/link to this blog post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, “A Mayflower
Themed Weathervane in Dorking, UK – Weathervane Wednesday”, Nutfield
Genealogy, posted June 21, 2023, (
No comments:
Post a Comment