this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation

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[–] wjrii@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago

I’m descended from John Billington, the first Englishman convicted of murder in North America.

Honestly, though, it’s 50/50 that he even did it. He and his family were one of the “normal” ones that the Pilgrims’ glorified travel agent recruited to make up the numbers to make the trip financially feasible, and they never got over the fact that these heathens survived the first winter and then did reasonably well at farming the land.

Of his two sons, IIRC one accidentally shot off a pistol and almost set the Mayflower on fire, and the other got lost not long after arrival and had to be delivered back home by the local Native Americans. I think one of them also set a bunch of gullible Pilgrims off looking for an “inland sea” that turned out to be an overgrown pond.