BORN: probably England, c1600
DIED: between 25 March and 10 October 1633, Plymouth
MARRIED:
CHILDREN by MARTHA:
| NAME | BIRTH | DEATH | MARRIAGE |
| Mary | c1626, Plymouth | aft November 1689 | Ephraim Tinkham, c1646, Plymouth |
| Priscilla | c1629, Plymouth | aft 17 February 1697/8 | William Allen, 21 March 1649, Sandwich |
CHILDREN by MARY
| NAME | BIRTH | DEATH | MARRIAGE |
| Rebecca | c1631, Plymouth | aft. 9 March 1698/9 | William Snow, c1654 |
| child | bef 1633 | died young | unmarried |
Nothing is known about the ancestry of Peter Browne. The royal lineage that has been published is totally without basis, and no documentary evidence has ever been presented to show who the parents of Peter Browne actually were.
It has been suggested that Peter Browne may have come from Great Burstead, Billericay, Essex, but that claim is simply based on the fact that there was a Peter Brown taxed there in 1624, and since names tend to run in families maybe he was somehow related. No evidence has ever been shown to suggest the two are related, however.
Peter Browne is known to have had a brother John, who came to Plymouth and took up residence in Duxbury.
William Bradford wrote in his "increasings and decreasings" section of his journal the following about Peter Browne: "Peter Browne married twice. By his first wife he had two children who are living and both of them married; and the one of them hath two children. By his second wife he had two more. He died about sixteen years since."
Peter Browne and John Goodman are mentioned in a strange incident recorded in Mourt's Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. While out gathering thatch for the houses the Pilgrims were building the first winter, Peter and John got lost in the woods when their mastiff chased after a deer and they followed. They spent the night in a tree, thinking they had heard a lion in the forest, and the next day walked a long time until they climbed a high hill and were able to spot Plymouth Harbor and get themselves reoriented.
Peter Browne of the Mayflower did not have any male children. If he had any sons living in 1633, they would have been mentioned in the settlement of his estate. Instead, he gives all his land to his daughters. Several books and other sources have incorrectly given Peter Browne sons, the most common mistake being the claim that Peter Brown of Windsor, Connecticut was a son.
Robert S. Wakefield, Mayflower Families for Five Generations: Peter Browne, vol. 7 (Plymouth: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 1992).
Robert C. Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, 1:259-261 (Boston: New England Historical and Genealogical Society, 1995).
Eugene Aubrey Stratton, Plymouth Colony: Its History and People, 1620-1691, (Ancestor Publishers, Salt Lake City, 1986).
William Bradford and Edward Winslow. A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation settled at Plymouth . . . (John Bellamie: London, 1622).
William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Samuel Morison (New York: Random House, 1952).