America’s First Murderer Is An Original Mayflower Pilgrim
America’s history begins in 1620 when the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock. A total of forty-one pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact, the new governing document of the New World. Those who signed the document were bound to obey the government and legal system established at Plymouth Rock. America’s new colonies survived nearly a decade under the compact before one of the original forty-one men, was charged with and executed for murder, John Billington. The Billington family was described by Governor William Bradford as “one of the profanest families amongst them”
Billington was born around 1580 in Lincolnshire. In 1620 John, his wife, Ellen, and his sons, John and Francis, boarded the Mayflower and headed to the New World. The Billington family was well known for being trouble makers. John Billington was also the first man to commit a crime in the new world. In 1621 John refused to obey military orders. Billington continued to be involved in disputes and civil disobedience with fellow colonists. He was also accused of supporting local dissenters, who sent letters to England in an attempt to under mind the colonies. Billington was also implicated but never punished for leading a revolt against the church's rule, known as the Oldham-Lyford Scandal. In 1630 John commits the ultimate crime. He becomes the first recorded white man to kill another white man in the colonies. Billington was tried and executed by hanging, for shooting fellow colonist John Newcomen, who was a known enemy of Billington.
John isn’t the only family member known for his disobedience and civil disputes. John’s wife Ellen Billington was reported to have her own problems with the law. Ellen was reportedly sent to the stocks and later whipped for slandering John Doane, a politician and church deacon. After John’s execution Ellen Billington eventually remarries and leaves the area. As for the rest of John’s family, his oldest son John passed away somewhere between 1627 and John Sr’s execution in 1630. Francis the youngest of the Billington children is married in 1634 and has a total of nine children with his wife. The family relocated to Middleboro by the 1650.
In his book Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation 1606–1646, Governor William Bradford wrote this about the murder “This year John Billington the elder (one that came over with the first) was arraigned; and both by grand, and petty jury found guilty of willful murder; by plain and notorious evidence. And was for the same accordingly executed.”
“This as it was the first execution amongst them, so was it a matter of great sadness unto them; they used all due means about his trial, and took the advice of Mr. Winthrop, and other the ablest gentlemen in the Bay of Massachusetts, that were then newly come over, who concurred with them that he ought to die, and the land be purged from blood.”
“He and some of his, had been often punished for miscarriages before, being one of the profanest families amongst them; … His fact was, that he waylaid a young man, one John Newcomen (about a former quarrel) and shot him with a gun, whereof he died.”
Many individuals can trace their genealogy all the way back to the Mayflower. One can only hope that they don’t find any skeletons in their family closet, or trace their ancestry all the way back to America’s first murderer.
Sources
America’s first murderer was executed for killing fellow Plymouth settler. Mayflower 400. https://www.mayflower400uk.org/education/who-were-the-pilgrims/2020/may/john-billington/