John STANDISH

                   Accompanied the Separatists on the Mayflower as their military commander. He never joined the Separatist church. He arrived with his wife Rose in 1620.  Further historical information in notes.

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.

1. Caleb Johnson's Mayflower Web Pages, http://members.aol.com/calebj/passenger.html.
2. IGI.
3. Ancestral File.

Could DNA Tests Solve the Mystery Of Miles Standish?Finding His Birthplace Has Descendants Bickering;Suspect Church RecordsBy ROBERT TOMSHO and EMILY NELSONStaff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNALNovember 24, 2004; Page A1PLYMOUTH, Mass. -- In 1620, Miles Standish led 101 other Mayflowercolonists ashore here. He battled Indians, took part in the firstThanksgiving and inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's classic poemabout his unrequited love for a Pilgrim maiden.Although historians recorded much about the bantam old soldier, hetook one piece of vital data to his grave 348 years ago: thewhereabouts of his birth.[Miles Standish]By all accounts, the Pilgrim was an Englishman, but because his birthrecords can't be found, it's unknown precisely where he was born inabout 1584. Multiple branches of the Standish family lived in Englandthen. Now, researchers and Standish descendants are fighting overwhich one produced Miles in a battle featuring DNA tests, suspectchurch records and the plotting of a commemorative golf tournament.Helen Moorwood, a genealogist who has researched the matter for years,maintains the Pilgrim patriarch hailed from Lancashire, the northwestEnglish county where she grew up. There, in what is now the small townof Chorley, one branch of the Standish family had an estate calledDuxbury Hall. Miles Standish eventually built his own home in Duxbury,Mass., a town he co-founded."I have never been able to come across any reason why he should nameit Duxbury unless he was related to the Standishes of Duxbury,"declares Ms. Moorwood, who supports an effort by Chorley to use theStandish legacy as a tourist attraction.That doesn't wash with retired chemist Norman Standish, a10th-generation, direct descendant of Miles and owner of the StandishBed and Breakfast, in Lanark, Ill. Known for dressing up in Pilgrimgarb for local Thanksgiving events, he grew up believing that Mileswas a Manxman -- as natives of the Isle of Man, in the Irish Sea, callthemselves. Miles Standish's will mentioned a place by that name, andold land records show a Standish family lived on an island farm,Ellenbane, around the time of his birth."There is no question his mother and father lived in Ellenbane," saysMr. Standish, a former president of the North American ManxAssociation, who has led a long-running effort to buy Ellenbane andturn it into a monument.The man at the center of the wrangle was a more complex character thanthe awkward suitor described in "The Courtship of Miles Standish,"Longfellow's fictional 1858 poem. The poem, and accounts written inStandish's time, praise his military prowess and devotion to fellowcolonists.But the pint-sized Pilgrim is also said to have invited an Indian whohad insulted him to a feast and then used the warrior's own knife tokill him. "A little chimney is soon fired; so was the Plymouthcaptain, a man of very little stature, yet of a very hot and angrytemper," wrote William Hubbard, a clergyman who arrived inMassachusetts a few years after the Mayflower.[Caroline Lewis Kardell]"He was a crusty, bad-tempered old guy," says Caroline Lewis Kardell.She spent 15 years as chief genealogist of the General Society ofMayflower Descendants, in Plymouth, Mass., whose 26,000 living memberscan trace their lineage directly back to one of the originalcolonists. When someone applied to join the Mayflower society, it wasup to Ms. Kardell to review the files and make a ruling.After retiring in 2002, Ms. Kardell volunteered to head anexperimental DNA project for the Mayflower society to track down thebirthplaces of Miles Standish and a half-dozen other Pilgrim men. Malemembers of the Mayflower Society directly descended from suchcolonists were asked to submit swabs from their inner cheeks to testfor certain chromosomes that are passed only from father to son. Theplan was to conduct such testing among Englishmen with the same lastnames, looking for matches that might link the Americans to aparticular location.But by last year, Ms. Kardell had turned up only three Standishes inthis country who could trace their lineage, father-t
o-son, all the wayback to Miles. And when asked to volunteer a DNA sample, one of themtold her to get lost.Then, in the fall of 2003, a letter arrived from John Cree, theAnglican rector of Chorley, a faded market town of 20,000. The Rev.Cree had a church pew used in centuries past by members of theStandish family, an unknown number of whom are buried in a cryptbeneath his altar. Because local tradition had it that Miles Standishhad been born in the area, Chorley was hoping to hold some sort ofcommemoration.Sensing an opportunity to jump-start her Standish search, Ms. Kardellreplied to the rector, asking whether there were any Standish men fromChorley willing to part with a tad of tissue from their cheeks. Mr.Cree went to the local newspapers. "DNA tests set to prove PilgrimFather's heritage," read one headline in the Chorley Guardian lastDecember.Soon there was talk of a Miles Standish heritage trail, acommemorative festival and maybe even a golf tournament. "I'm therector of the church that is sitting on this," says Mr. Cree. "I'd benegligent if I didn't stir it up."Actually, Chorley had been stirred before. Convinced they had a claimto lands in town, some of Miles's U.S. descendants sent arepresentative in 1846 to establish a definitive link. The manreturned complaining that local church records had been ripped out oreffaced until they were unreadable, perhaps by locals seeking tothwart a Yankee land grab.Miles's will mentions claims to several plots of ancestral land. Manyare in the Chorley vicinity, including acreage now occupied by a golfcourse that was once home to Duxbury Hall, a sprawling estate owned byone group of Standishes. But the will also refers to claims toproperty at an "Isle of Man." That is the name of a large farm thatstill exists in Lancashire -- but also the name of the island whereanother branch of the Standish family lived.The Standish boosters in Chorley aren't ruffled. "We've got a pew, afew dead bodies under a church and a defaced record," says ChrisMellor, cultural services manager for the Chorley Borough Council."That's more than the Isle of Man."Still, Chorley's campaign has run into hurdles. Some English branchesof the Standish family have simply died out. Most male Standishes whohave volunteered to take DNA tests can't document their heritage.One exception is Benjamin Standish, a 46-year-old Benedictine monk wholives near Reading, in the south of England. As a boy, Father Standishsays, his parents told him ancestors lived in Chorley. The monk candocument part of his family tree, albeit only as far back as 1780,more than a century after Miles Standish died.A sample of his DNA shows close kinship to the two samples gathered inthe U.S. by Ms. Kardell. The specimens from the three Standish men arenot exact matches but are close enough to indicate with a high degreeof probability that the trio had a common ancestor, says MaxBlankfeld, a vice president of DNA Family Tree, the Houston lab thattested them. But if that common forebear came generations before MilesStandish, all three men might be only distant cousins of the Pilgrim.Benjamin Standish will be among the honored guests at a five-dayfestival in Chorley in March commemorating the signing of MilesStandish's will. It will include plays, lectures and concerts -- as awarm-up for a bigger celebration in 2006 to mark the 350th anniversaryof his death. There's also talk in town about trying to open theStandish family crypt to gather additional DNA samples, although Mr.Cree thinks that may involve getting the permission of the Pilgrim'snearest living relative, whoever that might be.