William Mullins

The business inside a dying man's will

William Mullins’s will counted twenty-one dozen shoes and thirteen pairs of boots. The stock had crossed the Atlantic with him. In the colony’s first winter, as he arranged his affairs, those goods became part of a plan to provide for a family divided between England and New England.

Born circa 1572, probably at Dorking in Surrey, a county in southern England, Mullins sailed on the Mayflower with his wife Alice, their children Joseph and Priscilla, and his servant Robert Carter. His older children William and Sarah remained in England. The voyage therefore involved both a migrating household and continuing obligations at home.

His testament moves between those two worlds. Forty pounds held by a man named Wood was to be divided equally among Alice, Joseph, Priscilla and his eldest son. The eldest son was also to receive outstanding debts, bonds and bills, apart from that particular forty pounds, along with stock already in his hands. Mullins provided a smaller monetary legacy for his eldest daughter.

For the goods with him overseas, he made a different division: half to Alice, with Joseph and Priscilla sharing the other half. The footwear was the subject of a separate commercial proposal. He proposed placing it in the Company’s hands for forty pounds “at seaven years,” with his overseers permitted to adjust the price if necessary. If accepted at that rate, the arrangement was to give him nine shares at the division: two each for Alice, William, Joseph and Priscilla, and one for the Company. The will also offered his share of land to William if that son came across the Atlantic.

These provisions show Mullins working with credit, merchandise and shares. They reveal more than the occupational label “shoemaker” can safely establish on its own. The footwear was an asset to be converted into support for his household, and he was still considering how his eldest son might join the settlement.

The will also makes provision for supervision. Mullins named John Carver and Mr. Williamson as overseers and asked them to watch over his wife and children as fathers and friends. He separately asked them to pay attention to Robert, adding a brief expression of dissatisfaction with his conduct. The document does not explain that disagreement. Carver, Giles Heale and Christopher Jones appear on the surviving copy as witnesses.

Mullins died at Plymouth, the colony on the coast of present-day Massachusetts, on February 21, 1620/21. Alice, Joseph and Robert also died during the first year. Priscilla survived and later married John Alden. In July 1621, authority to administer Mullins’s estate in England was granted to Sarah Blunden, his daughter. His plans had assumed that a wife and several children would remain to benefit from them; the surviving family was already different by the time the estate crossed into English probate.

Mullins was also a signer of the Mayflower Compact.