DIRECT LINE

Alden Family Desended From

Alden of Mayflower.

YOUNG’ST DESCENDANT

Interesting Ancestry of One of

Waukegan’s Families Line

is Unbroken.

It is not generally known here that the Alden family of this city were [sic] direct descendants of John Alden of the Mayflower fame.

A Chicago Sunday paper contained an interesting article regarding the ancestry of John Finney Alden of Chicago, son of Earl Alden, formerly of this city, as being the youngest living descendant of the Pilgrim father.

One thing omitted, and a quite interesting fact is that while the male line is directly descended from John Alden, the female line, beginning with Mrs. R. Alden, of this city, also traces back to a pilgrim father, John Howland, who was an associate of John Alden and came over in the Mayflower. Mrs. Alden was a Howland and is likewise proud of her ancestry which is traced without a break to the Pilgrim father.

A DIRECT DESCENDANT.

Of the young Alden, the Inter-Ocean said:

John Finney Alden, of No. 185 Webster avenue, Chicago, is the youngest living descendant of John Alden of Mayflower fame. He was born Feb. 15 and consequently is just 10 day [sic] old. Young John is a sturdy strong-lunged youngster, and gives abundant evidence that he will always be able to “speak for himself.” This latest John Alden is tenth in line from the original and famous, John, who, tradition says, acted as messenger from Miles Standish to the Puritan Priscilla, asking her hand in marriage. And then, as all Americans know—

Archly the maiden smiled, and with her eyes

over-running with laughter

Said, in a tremulous voice,

Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?

Young John Finney Alden is the son of Earl G. Alden, and traces his ancestry back to the Mayflower pioneer through an unbroken male line. Mr. Alden, the father, guards carefully the copy of a memorial of the Alden family compiled by Dr. Ebenezer Alden of New England in 1867. This memorial gives Rinaldo Alden, grandfather of young John Finney, as the sixth son of Abner Alden [illegible line probably states that Abner is the son of Earl Alden], the son of Nathan, who was the son of John, the son of John, son of Joseph, son of John the Mayflower pilgrim and successful suitor of Priscilla Mulines [sic].

In the brief and quaint sketch given in the memorial of the original John Alden it is told that he was one of the Plymouth pilgrims and the last male survivor of those who came in the Mayflower and signed the compact in her cabin in 1620. He was much employed in public business and was an assistant to the governor for many years. He was born in 1599, and died at Duxbury, Sept. 12, 1687, “in a good old age, an old man and full of years and was gathered to his people—and his sons buried him.”

He married probably, in 1621, Priscilla, daughter of William Molines [sic], or Mullens, who with his wife came also in the Mayflower and both died in the February succeeding their landing.

Their residence after a few years was in Duxbury, on the north side of the village, on a farm which is still in possession of their descendants of the seventh generation, having never been alienated.

[Retrieved and transcribed by Nanci Headley Kotowski from page 2 of The Waukegan Daily Sun, Monday, February 26, 1900.]