JOHN CRACKSTONE
ORIGIN: Leiden, Holland
MIGRATION: 1620 on Mayflower
FIRST RESIDENCE: Plymouth
BIRTH: No later than about 1575 based on marriage of daughter.
DEATH: Plymouth between 11 January 1620/1 and 10 April 1621 [Bradford 445].
MARRIAGE: By about 1600 __ __ ; she had probably died before 1620, and perhaps considerably earlier.
CHILDREN:
- ANNA, b. say 1600; m. Leiden (banns) 22 December 1618 [NS] Thomas Smith [MQ 40:117-19].
- JOHN, b. say 1602 (or later); came to Plymouth in 1620; in 1623 Plymouth land division granted [probably] one acre [PCR 12:4); in 1627 Plymouth cattle division listed as the thirteenth member of the second company [PCR 12:9]; d. Plymouth in 1627 or soon after [Bradford 445].
COMMENTS: Bradford tells us that “John Crackston and his son John Crackston" were on the Mayflower in 1620, and in his 1651 accounting of the Mayflower passengers, Bradford noted that “John Crackston died in the first mortality, and about some five or six years after his son died, having lost himself in the woods; his feet became frozen, which put him into a fever of which he died" [Bradford 442, 445). Crackstone signed the Mayflower Compact.
On 3 March 1639/40 "The Heirs of John Crackstone" were included in a list of the Purchasers or Oldcomers, who were to receive land [PCR 2: 1 77]. By 1652 this share of land had passed to William Bradford and William Bassett [MD 4:186].
In 1974 Robert S. Wakefield gathered all the evidence then available on John Crackstone (including all the items noted above) [MQ 40:117-19]. Since the marriage intention for Anna Crackstone, daughter of John, called her of Colchester, an extensive search was made in the records of that city. Although a few traces of the surname were found there, no firm connection was made with any Colchester records.
Wakefield noted that none of the baptismal records for children of a Thomas Smith in Leiden subsequent to 1618 appear to be for the Thomas Smith who married Anna Crackstone.
The Pilgrim Migration: Immigrants to Plymouth Colony 1620-1633
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