CHILDREN (all by Barbara):
| NAME | BIRTH | DEATH | MARRIAGE |
| Charles | c1624, Plymouth | between 1627 and 1634 | unmarried |
| Alexander | c1626, Plymouth | 6 July 1702, Duxbury, MA | (1). Sarah Alden, Duxbury, MA
(2). Desire (Doty)(Sherman) Holmes, c1688 |
| John | c1627, Plymouth | before 1650 | unmarried |
| Myles | c1629, Plymouth | lost at sea, 19 August 1661 | Sarah Winslow, 19 July 1660, Boston |
| Lora | after May 1627, probably Plymouth | before 1651 | unmarried |
| Josiah | c1633, Plymouth | 19 March 1690/1, Preston, CT | (1). Mary Dingley, 19 December 1654, Marshfield, MA;
(2). Sarah Allen, after 7 March 1655/6 |
| Charles | after 1634, probably Duxbury | after 7 March 1655/6 | unmarried |
A lot of research has been done on the ancestry of Myles Standish, yet nothing conclusive on his parents have been found. G.V.C. Young has suggested Myles Standish's great-grandfather was Huan Standish of the Isle of Man. However, recent research has tended to undermine this conclusion, and new discoveries are currently being made which could very well disprove the Isle of Man origins altogether.
Thomas Morton of Merrymount, in his 1637 book New England's Canaan, mentions that "Captain Shrimp" was bred a soldier in the Low Countries, and Nathaniel Morton wrote in 1669 that Standish was from Lancashire. The will of Myles Standish mentions numerous lands both in Lancashire and on the Isle of Man.
The maiden names of Myles Standish's wives Rose and Barbara are not known. Rose died on 29 January 1620/1 at Plymouth, and wife Barbara arrived on the ship Anne in July 1623. By the time of the 1623 Division of Land, Myles and Barbara were already married. This probably suggests a marriage arranged by Standish, to a Barbara he either knew from home or from his stay in Leyden. There is absolutely no evidence at all to suggest Barbara's maiden name was Mullins, as is sometimes claimed, nor that either Rose or Barbara were his cousins as occasionally claimed. There is also no evidence to suggest Myles Standish pursued Priscilla Mullins, as in the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "The Courtship of Myles Standish". This poem was intentionally fictional and should be considered as such. Myles Standish would have been about 39 and Priscilla about 18--an unlikely couple.
Myles Standish's
will
Inventory
of Myles Standish's estate
Myles Standish started his military
career as a drummer, and eventually worked his way up and into the Low Countries
(Holland), where English troops under Heratio Vere had been stationed to
help the Dutch in their war with Spain. It was certainly here that he made
acquaintance with the Pilgrims at Leyden, and came into good standing with
the Pilgrims pastor John Robinson. Standish was eventually hired
by them to be their military captain.
Captain Standish lead most of the first exploring missions into the wintery surroundings at Cape Cod looking for a place to settle. He was elected military captain, and organized the Pilgrims defenses against the Indians, as well as protect the Colony from the French, Spanish, and Dutch. In 1622 he led an expedition to save the remaining members of the Wessagusett Colony and killed several Indians who had led the plot to kill all the Englishmen at that Colony.
Standish befriended an Indian named Hobomok, just as Bradford befriended Squanto, and the two lived out their lives very close to one another. Hobomok was a warrior for Massasoit, and the two "military men" probably understood one another better than most.
So much could be written about Myles Standish. But here are a few selections from what contemporaries had to say about him, both the good and the bad.
William Bradford on Myles Standish:
But that which was most sad and lamentable was, that in two or three months' time half of their company died, especially in January and February . . . So as their died some times two or three of a day in the foresaid time, that of 100 and odd persons, scarce fifty remained. And of these, in the time of most distress, there was but six or seven sound persons who to their great commendations, be it spoken, spared no pains night nor day, but with abundance of toil and hazard of their own health, fetched them wood, made them fires, dressed their meat, made their beds, washed their loathsome clothes, clothed and unclothed them. . . . Two of these seven were Mr. William Brewster, their reverend Elder, and Myles Standish, their captain and military commander, unto whom myself and many others were much beholden in our low and sick condition.
William Hubbard, c1650 in his The General History of New England, writes of Standish:
Capt. Standish had been bred a soldier in the Low Countries, and never entered the school of our Savior Christ, or of John Baptist, his harbinger; or, if he was ever there, had forgot his first lessens, to offer violence to no man, and to part with the cloak rather than needlessly contend for the coat, though taken away without order. A little chimney is soon fired; so was the Plymouth captain, a man of very little stature, yet of a very hot and angry temper. The fire of his passion soon kindled, and blown up into a flame by hot words, might easily have consumed all, had it not been seasonably quenched.
Thomas Morton of Merrymount, in his New England's Cannan describing Standish, and his own arrest which was carried out by Standish (1637):
. . . But mine Host [i.e. Thomas Morton] no sooner had set open the door, and issued out, but instantly Captain Shrimp and the rest of his worthies stepped to him, laid hold of his arms [guns], and had him down . . . Captain Shrimp, and the rest of the nine worthies, made themselves, (by this outrageous riot,) Masters of mine Host of Merrymount, and disposed of what he had at his plantation.
Nathaniel Morton in his New England's Memorial (1669) wrote of Myles Standish's death in 1656:
This year Captain Miles Standish expired his mortal life. . . . In his younger time he went over into the low countries, and was a soldier there, and came acquainted with the church at Leyden, and came over into New-England, with such of them as at the first set out for the planting of the plantation of New-Plimouth, and bare a deep share of their first difficulties, and was always very faithful to their interest. He growing ancient, became sick of the stone, or stranguary, whereof, after his suffering of much dolorous pain, he fell asleep in the Lord, and was honourably buried at Duxbury.
Conspiratorial letter of John Oldham, intercepted by William Bradford:
Captain Standish looks like a silly boy and is in utter contempt.
Edward Winslow, in Good News From New England describing an retaliatory military expedition, relating to an Indian conspiracy Massasoit had alerted the Pilgrims to (1624):
Also Pecksuot, being a man of greater stature than the Captain, told him, though he were a great Captain, yet he was but a little man; and said he, though I be no sachem, yet I am a man of great strength and courage. These things the Captain observed, yet bare with patience for the present. . . . On the next day he began himself with Pecksuot, and snatching his own knife from his neck, though with much struggling, killed him therewith . . . Hobbamock stood by all this time as a spectator, and meddled not, observing how our men demeaned themselves in this action. All being here ended, smiling, he brake forth into these speeches to the Captain: "Yesterday Pecksuot, bragging of his own strength and stature, said, though you were a great captain, yet you were but a little man; but today I see you are big enough to lay him on the ground."
A chair and a sword owned by Myles Standish are preserved in the Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Massachusetts. The authenticity of the portrait of Myles Standish shown above not fully known. The inscription with the portrait reads "AEtatis Suae 38, Ao. 1625", and it is only by tradition that the portrait is of Myles Standish--a tradition, however, which dates back to at least 1812.
A pot thought to have been owned by Myles Standish.
Photo courtesy of: Pilgrim Hall Museum
Robert S. Wakefield, Mayflower Families for Five Generations: Myles Standish, volume 14 (Plymouth: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 1994).
George V.C. Young, Myles Standish: First Manx American, (Isle of Man: Manx-Svenska, 1984).
George V.C. Young, More on Pilgrim Myles Standish: First Manx American, (Isle of Man: Manx-Svenska, 1986).
George V.C. Young, Myles Standish was Born in Ellenbane, (Isle of Man: Manx-Svenska, 1988).
Norman Weston Standish, "Standish Lands in England," Mayflower Quarterly 52:109.
William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Samuel Morison (New York: Random House, 1952).
William Bradford and Edward Winslow. A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation settled at Plymouth . . . (London: John Bellamie, 1622).
Edward Winslow. Good News From New England (London: John Bellamie, 1624).
Thomas Morton. New English Canaan (Amsterdam: Frederick Stam, 1637).
Nathaniel Morton. New England's Memorial (Cambridge, 1669).
Merton Taylor Goodrich, "The Children and Grandchildren of Capt. Myles Standish", New England Historical and Genealogical Register 87(1933):149-153.
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1876-1877, p. 324 (Standish portrait information).