Elizabeth Pabodie

Who was Elizabeth Pabodie?

Elisabeth Pabodie, also known as Elisabeth Alden Pabodie or Elisabeth Peabody, was allegedly the first white woman born in New England.

Elisabeth Pabodie was born Elisabeth Alden in 1623, the first-born child of the Plymouth Colony settlers John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, who were both passengers on the Mayflower in 1620. She married William Pabodie, a leader of Duxbury, Massachusetts, on December 26, 1644. All thirteen of their children were born in Duxbury before Elisabeth eventually moved to Little Compton, Rhode Island in the 1680s. She died on the 31st of May in 1717 in Little Compton and was buried in the cemetery on Little Compton Common.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a descendant of Elisabeth Pabodie and made her parents John Alden and Priscilla Mullins famous through his poem The Courtship of Miles Standish.