James Chilton (1556-1620)

English Separatist who came to America aboard the ship Mayflower. He was a signer of the Mayflower Compact, and was probably the oldest Mayflower passenger and resident of Plymouth Colony.

Vital Statistics

 * Son of Lyonell Chilton, a yeoman in Canterbury
 * Born around 1556, almost certainly in Canterbury, Kent, England

In Canterbury
James Chilton was born around 1556, almost certainly in Canterbury, Kent, England. Nothing is known of his youth. His father, Lyonell Chilton, was a yeoman in Canterbury, and served two years as churchwarden of St. Paul's Parish Church there

In 1583, James Chilton received the unusual privilege of being made a freeman "by gift," by Canterbury's mayor. As a freeman, Chilton became a "Merchant Tailor" in Canterbury's Company of Woollen Drapers and Tailors. Around this same time, he married and began a family. While he would eventually have at least ten children, only three are known to have lived to adulthood.

From 1584 to 1600, Chilton was charged and fined several times in Canterbury, for offenses ranging from selling food or drink without a license to beating a man with a stick.

In Sandwich
In 1600 or 1601, Chilton and his family moved twenty kilometres east, to Sandwich, Kent. Sandwich was becoming a center of Separatist activity, and was home to several future members of John Robinson's Leiden church.

The first evidence that the Chilton family had its own Separatist views appears in 1609. In late April, Chilton's wife was among four people that secretly buried a dead child, without having the Church of England perform its mandatory burial rites. When the burial was discovered, the group rejected the need for the mandatory rites, calling them "popishly ceremonies and of no other force." For this defiant act, Chilton's wife and two of the others were excommunicated from the Church of England on 12 June 1609.

In Leiden
Sometime between 1609 and 1615, Chilton and his family left England and joined John Robinson's congregation in Leiden, Holland. Chilton's oldest daughter Isabella was married in Leiden 21 July 1615 (New Style).

On Sunday, 28 April 1619 (New Style), Chilton's house in Leiden became the scene of a small riot, due to a case of mistaken identity. Shortly after Chilton returned home from church, about twenty boys assembled and began throwing things at his house, shouting that Arminians were meeting there. When Chilton confronted the crowd, he was struck in the head by a large cobblestone, and was knocked unconscious.

On the Mayflower
When the ship Mayflower set out for North America in 1620 with members of the Leiden congregation, William Bradford recalled that the passengers included "James Chilton, and his wife, and Mary, their dougter." At about 64 years old, Chilton was probably the oldest passenger on the ship. Chilton's other two known surviving children, 21-year-old Ingle and married 33-year-old Isabella, remained behind in Leiden.

When the Mayflower Compact was drawn up on 11 November 1620, Chilton was one of the signers James Chilton died on 8 December 1620, while the Mayflower lay anchored in Provincetown Harbor. He evidently died of disease, as Bradford reported that he "dyed in the first infection."

What became of Chilton's family

 * Chilton's wife also died during the first winter, "in the first infection."


 * Chilton's daughter Mary, who was left an orphan at  Plymouth, survived and later married John Winslow, brother of Edward Winslow.


 * Chilton's daughter Ingle married Robert Nelson in Leiden in 1622. No further record has been found of her.


 * Chilton's daughter Isabella came to Plymouth Colony around 1630, with her children and her husband, Roger Chandler.