Ellen More (1612-1621)

The More Children on the Mayflower
Four passengers were small children (the More children), given over by Samuel More to Thomas Weston and then to agents John Carver (1565-1621) and Robert Cushman (1577-1625), who assigned them to senior Mayflower Pilgrims to be classed as indentured servants. This was all due to scandal involving the children’s mother and her husband Samuel’s effort to dispose of the children by sending them away to Virginia as indentured servants. Long ago, Richard More and his siblings were even thought to have even been parentless London street waifs, but in 1959 a 1622 document revealed their being the product of an adulterous relationship as the reason why the children were sent abroad on the Mayflower.

Three of the four child died that first winter and are buried in an unmarked grave with other pilgrims that died on Cole's Hill and recognized on the Pilgrim Memorial Tomb in Plymouth.


 *  More, Ellen (Elinor) (1612-1621)* {Shipton, Shropshire), Elinor (Ellen) More, age 8, assigned as a servant of Edward Winslow (1595-1655). She died in November 1620 soon after the arrival of the Mayflower at Cape Cod Harbor.
 *  More, Jasper (1613-1620)* , (Shipton, Shropshire), brother, age 7, indentured to John Carver. He died onboard Mayflower in Cape Cod Harbor December 6, 1620. He was buried ashore in the Provincetown area.
 * More, Richard, (Shipton, Shropshire), brother, age 6, indentured to William Brewster. Richard More is buried in what was known as the Charter Street Burial Ground but is now the Burying Point/Charter Street Cemetery in Salem, Massachusetts. He is the only Mayflower passenger to have his gravestone still where it was originally placed sometime in the mid-1690s. Also buried nearby in the same cemetery were his two wives, Christian Hunter More and Jane (Crumpton) More."
 * More, Mary (1616-1621)*, sister, age 4, assigned as a servant of William Brewster. She died sometime in the winter of 1620/1621. Her burial place is unknown, but may been on Cole's Hill in Plymouth in an unmarked grave as with so many others buried there that winter. As with her sister Ellen, she is recognized on the Pilgrim Memorial Tomb in Plymouth, misidentified after her sister's name as "and a brother (children)" - the statement of calling her "a brother" mistakenly coming from William Bradford's failing memory years after the event of her death.