BORN: Circa 1597, Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, England
DIED: December 1620, Provincetown Harbor

Dorothy May of Wisbech, Cambridgeshire moved with her English Separatist family to become part of the Ancient Brethren congregation in Amsterdam. Her father, Henry May, was a respected elder of Henry Ainsworth’s congregation. The Mays were related to the family of William White, who likewise had sought freedom of worship in Amsterdam, and were acquainted with the wider circle of English religious exiles in Holland, including members of the Leiden congregation.

Dorothy was 16 when she married 23-year old William Bradford in 1613. The couple married in Amsterdam and settled in Leiden where Bradford was living. Their son John was born around 1617.

William Bradford, presumably with his wife, was deeply involved in the planning and preparation for the Mayflower voyage. Dorothy Bradford was in her early twenties when she and her husband emigrated from Leiden. Perhaps because they were so well informed of the risks and dangers of their undertaking, the Bradfords chose to leave their child behind in Leiden. Young John Bradford later joined his father in Plymouth.

Dorothy May Bradford died shortly after the arrival of the Mayflower in Cape Cod Bay. There is no first-hand account of her death. Eighty years later, Reverend Cotton Mather wrote that she had fallen overboard and drowned.

For centuries, Dorothy Bradford’s tragic death was never considered as other than an accident. Then in 1869, novelist Jane G. Austin published a fictional story in which the Mayflower passenger committed suicide. Austin’s story reflected 19th-century views of women as emotional and weak. There is no historical basis for the story.