A Pilgrim, twenty-one years old when he and Priscilla Mullins sailed to the new world aboard the Mayflower. He was the youngest signer of the Mayflower Compact. He and Priscilla were among the first passengers of the Mayflower to be married in America at Plymouth, MA in 1622. Five years later they bought a farm of 169 acres. There, in 1631, John Alden and Miles Standish (also a Mayflower passenger from whom Aunt Virginia Downs and Uncle Travis Hatch are said by Mimi to be descended from) founded the town of Duxbury, MA.

John and Priscilla had (11) children. Among their descendants were Henry Wadswoth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, John Quincy Adams and Charles Francis Adams.

Monument bearing Elizabeth's original gravestone stands in the Little Compton, RI cemetery in the middle of town. The monument is inscribed, proclaiming Elizabeth to have been the first white woman born in New England.