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Wednesday, June 21, 2023

A Mayflower Themed Weathervane in Dorking, UK - Weathervane Wednesday


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.



 For the truly curious:

A blog post about the new Mayflower weathervane: 

https://newleatherheadliving.wordpress.com/2021/03/21/fire-and-iron-gallery-commission-celebrates-dorkings-mayflower-heritage/ 

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  

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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, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2023/06/a-mayflower-themed-weathervane-in.html: accessed [access date]). 

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