The Mystery of a Missing Bradford Letter

I recently came across a snippet from a letter by Bradford that I’ve never seen before, and I’m interested to see whether there’s anyone out there with more information on it. It’s in the 1936 book English Prelude by Marguerite Allis, in which she explores the homeland of her English ancestors. (You can read it online here). She wrote:

Mrs. Southworth was Alice Carpenter … who took charge of Bradford’s little boy when the Pilgrim Father sailed in the Mayflower. The letters he wrote back to her have a charming stateliness with the clear flame of devotion shining through. ‘Gentle Mistress Southworth,’ begins one telling all the news of the young colony. At the close he signed himself: ‘With pure embracings of my kindest affections, thy husband by promise.’ When Alice went over to marry her staid lover she was accompanied by his son, although her own, Constant Southworth, did not go until five years later when the sum of ten pounds was paid for his eleven weeks’ voyage.¹

Unfortunately Allis did not use footnotes. I have searched for the complete text of this letter, or even another mention of it, but so far have found nothing. The best I’ve found is a 1618 letter by John Winthrop in which he signed himself “thy husband by promise.”² If you know where this letter has come from, or have heard of it before, please leave a comment below or send me an email.

My suspicion at the moment is that this letter never existed. For one thing, I don’t think the timeline would have worked for Bradford send Alice a letter after an engagement between the death of Alice’s husband and her arrival in Plymouth. From the sections of Allis’ book that I read, I doubt that she intentionally fabricated it, but I suspect that she (or one of her sources) mixed up their notes and misattributed another document to Bradford. Interest in the Pilgrims was great enough by the 1930s that I do not think a genuine letter by Bradford would have escaped wider notice.

However, I’d be happy to be proved wrong! Rediscovering one of Bradford’s letters, especially one this personal, would be a huge boon to Pilgrim research. We’ve seen mysteries posted on this blog solved before, maybe it will happen again…..

1. Marguerite Allis. English Prelude. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1936),p. 81.
2. Robert C. Winthrop, Life and Letters of John Winthrop (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1864), p. 139.