The Mayflower was one of the most amazing boats in the world, but sadly the boat had an accident. That accident killed many  people, but there were a few people who survived the shipwreck. One of the survivors was named Humility Cooper  (1919). Prior to 1651 in  Leiden,Holland, traveled in 1620 on the voyage of the ship the Mayflower as a one-year-old female child in the company of the Edward Tilley family. Although Edward Tilley and his wife died, in the first winter in the new world. Humility survived to live her young life in the Plymouth Colony returning to England possibly in her teen years. Her fate in England is unknown. Humility was born in approximately 1619 in Holland to Robert Cooper and his wife Joan (Gresham) of  Henlow in Bedfordshire  England. They are known to have been in Leiden with  English separatist which is a small little town as in 1618 his name appears on a Leiden business agreement. He was a nephew of Edward Tilley’s wife Ann. Humility’s father Robert Cooper apparently being Ann’s brother, who may have been a resident of Leiden, Holland at the time of Mayflower sailing. Edward and Ann Tilley came aboard the Mayflower without any children of their own, but in company with two young relatives of Ann’s – her sixteen-year-old nephew Henry Samson  and her one-year-old niece Humility Cooper. Both children had been given over to the Tilley’s in Leiden, but the reason these two children were with them has never been fully explained. Per William Bradford’s later recollection of this family: “Edward Tillie, and Ann, his wife; and *2* children in which  their cousins  Henry Samson and Humility Cooper took care of them.” Why Humility was in the custody of Edward Tilleys is unknown. It is thought that  her mother was deceased, and if she was an orphan, Ann Tilley, being childless, may have assumed custody in place of the child’s mother. 

The Mayflower departed Plymouth, England on September 16th, 1620. The small 100-foot ship had 102 passengers with about 30 crew members. The first month in the Atlantic, the seas were not severe, but by the second month, the ship was being hit by strong north-Atlantic winter gales causing the ship to be badly shaken with water leaks from structural damage. There were two deaths, but this was just a precursor of what happened after their Cape cod arrival when almost half the company would die in the first winter. 

On November 19th,1620, after about three months at sea, including a month of delays in England, they spotted land, which was Cape Cod. After several days of trying to get south to their planned destination of the Colony of Virginia, strong winter seas forced them to return to the harbor at Cape Cod hook, where they anchored on November 21st. The Mayflower Compact was signed that day. There were forty-one of the adult males, including the servants, who signed the mayflower November 11the, 1620. In the 1623 Division of Land, with the Winslow family, she was assigned one “acre” as “Humility Cooper” adjoining the property of Henry Samson.In the 1627 Division of Cattle, she was in lot five with the Brewster family as “Humility Cooper.” From William Bradford’s 1651 writing, she “was sent for into England.” By whom it is not known, but it is thought that it was possibly her father. Her return to England may have occurred sometime about 1638 or prior to that. She was baptized at the church of Holy Trinity Minories in London on March 17 or 19, 1638-1639 with the record stating she had been born in Holland. Her baptism date would have made her age nineteen then and with the Tilleys on the Mayflower in 1620 she would have been about one year old.  William Bradford’s 1651 recollection, writing of the death of Humility Cooper: “and the.. girl Humility, their cousin (niece), was sent for into England, and dyed there.”It is known that Humility Cooper returned to England unmarried some time after May 22, 1627, and if Bradford is correct in stating that she “dyed ther”, she apparently died between the date of her baptism in 1638 and the time of Bradford’s 1651 record. There is no further information about her.