BORN: About 1604-1606
DIED: December 3, 1684/Middleboro

As a young teenager, Francis Billington accompanied his mother Elinor, his father John, and his older brother, also named John, to Plymouth on the Mayflower.

While anchored off Cape Cod, Francis shot off a “fowling-piece” and almost ignited a barrel of gunpowder in the cabin of the Mayflower. Another incident from the 17th-century records relates how Francis reported the discovery of a great sea after climbing a tall tree and spotting a large body of water. After a closer look, it turned out to be a large pond (called Billington Sea today).

When Francis was in his twenties, his father was tried for the murder of a young man, John Newcomen, and executed in the fall of 1630.

In 1634, Francis Billington married Christian Penn Eaton, widow of Mayflower passenger Francis Eaton. They had 9 children together. In April 1642, the Billingtons set out their daughter Elizabeth, at age 7, to be an apprentice to John Barnes and his wife Mary. The following January, the Court ordered the “placing and disposing” of two young Billington daughters, Francis’s stepson Benjamin Eaton, and his son Joseph, who was about 6 or 7 years old. Joseph, indentured to John Cooke the younger, repeatedly tried to return home; his parents were forbidden by the Court to receive him.

Francis Billington appears frequently in Plymouth Colony Court records, for land transactions, service on juries, attendance at town meetings, and for disputes and altercations. At some point after 1675, Francis and Christian Billington left Plymouth and lived in Middleboro. Their son Isaac accompanied them and cared for them for several years before their deaths.

Francis Billington died in December 1684 in Middleboro, Massachusetts.