Joan Hurst Rogers Tilley

Two marriages recorded at Henlow

Before she became a Mayflower passenger, Joan Hurst's life was recorded in the parish registers of Henlow, a village in Bedfordshire, England. Her baptism falls on March 13, 1567/68. She married Thomas Rogers there on June 18, 1593, and their daughter Joan was baptized the following May. This Thomas Rogers was not the man of that name who later sailed on the Mayflower.

Joan was a widow when she married John Tilley on September 20, 1596. Five children were baptized to the couple between 1597 and 1607: Rose, John, another Rose, Robert and Elizabeth. Those entries describe a family established in an English parish over many years before its Atlantic crossing.

In 1620, Joan and John travelled with Elizabeth, their youngest child. John's brother Edward and Edward's wife Agnes also sailed. The later lives of Joan's other children are uncertain.

Joan and John both died during the first winter at Plymouth Colony, on the coast of present-day Massachusetts. Their exact death dates are not securely recorded. Elizabeth survived and later married John Howland. Joan's own surviving record is brief, but it documents two marriages, motherhood in Henlow and the decision to undertake the voyage with her husband and youngest daughter.

The parish-based account identifies her father as William Hurst and her mother probably as Rose; the first daughter named Rose died young.