Who was America's first murderer?

John Billington was one of the signers of the Mayflower Compact -- he was also the first American murder. Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn about the fact and fiction surrounding America's first murderer.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined today as always by Josh Clark.
Josh with the Canna Fresca in the studio. Yeah. I

(00:24):
asked our producer Jerry if I could bring it in
and she said yes. I was trying to sound like
a game of clue, in which she traced out a murderer.
Oh gotcha, that's funny that you bring that up, because
I have a question about murder. It's a murder. Most
fowl actually murder, he spoke. Yeah. So I was looking
at some crime statistics during lunch, which I usually do
UH and I found out that the murder rate in

(00:45):
the US declined by one point one percent in two
thousand seven. Did you know that that's excellent news? It is,
it's good news. The bad news is about seventeen thousand
people still lost their lives at the hands of somebody else.
But if you really look at the UH these lists
of statistics, the US ranks some four per capita in

(01:06):
UH in murders. India's at the first they had like
thirty four thousand murders, but they also have like a billion,
you know, citizens, so it kind of works out. Uh.
And I started thinking, you know, India has been around
a really long time, uh, and there's probably been so
many murders. We have no idea who committed the first
murder in India, right, yeah, but we actually know who

(01:28):
did that. In the US. I know you're a fan
of a first some number of ones and top tens
and things like that, we actually know that John Billington
was the very first murderer in America. That is exactly right.
His Uh, he had a pretty checkered past, right, he did.
He he came over on the Mayflower originally, but he

(01:48):
wasn't a Puritan by anyone stretch of the imagination. He
was actually in the group called the strangers, right, The
people aboard the Mayflower divided themselves into the Saints and
strangers groups. And essentially, if you were a saint and
then that you are a Puritan, you are escaping religious persecution.
If you were a stranger, however, you've even coming over
for more mercenary means, or perhaps you just wanted to

(02:09):
start life anew or make some money mercenary means. Yes,
Oh gotcha, I thought you meant like to, you know,
just kill, kill, kill, that kind of thing, like John Billington's.
Ah yeah, back to him, you know their troubles that
It wasn't just Mr John Billington' that was that was
a handful his whole family, just cause headache after a
headache for the Puritans in Plymouth Colony. Right even on

(02:30):
the way over on the Mayflower Um, one of his
sons started firing his father's gun in a closed room
with an open keg of black powder. Could have just
torn the ship, the ship to shreds. Luckily it didn't,
and as far as I know, the boy probably got
a pretty sound thrashing for it. And it gets worse

(02:50):
because once they actually landed at Plymouth, essentially John Billington
refused to serve in the local militia. Yeah, which I
think they count as America's crime. Yeah. Yeah. He Miles
Standish actually tried to create a conscription forced military service
and Mr Billington would have nothing to do with it.

(03:12):
And he was apparently not much of a team player well,
and the reason for that may be attributed to the
fact that he didn't align all of his beliefs with
the Puritan lifestyle, and all of the leaders, the elected
leaders at least, were of Puritan background, and he saw
things a little bit different like he he definitely did.
He was accused of basically an anti government conspiracy, A

(03:37):
moved to top all the Puritan leaders. Um. And, like
I said, he wasn't the only Billington who was kind
of problematic. One of his sons wandered off, gets himself
captured by Native Americans, and like a search and rescue
party of ten men had to go out and find
him a couple of weeks. Yeah, they actually located him

(03:57):
near Cape Cod so it wasn't just h and aimless wandering.
He really kind of booked it and then he got captured.
They took him pretty far away exactly, so they had
to go rescue him. They put all their lives in jeopardy.
They they they put the colonists lives in jeopardy by alerting,
you know, their presence to these to these tribes who
had no idea who they were there. Um And uh

(04:19):
So Billington's eventually gets this horrible reputation around there. Uh
William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth Colony, hates him. I
mean just can't stand him, or his family finds him profane.
I think he says he calls him a knave, which
means a scoundrel. Um Bradford. If Bradford doesn't like you,
you're probably in big trouble. Although I don't think Bradford

(04:40):
made much trouble for Billington's. I think Billington made it
for himself. Right. There was this guy named William Newcoman,
and he was actually a newcomer to the colonies. Yeah,
he didn't know, you know, what the score was with
the Billington's. And apparently one day is out on Billington's
property and and gets in a quarrel with him, and

(05:01):
Billington shoots him and kills him. Right, America's first murder.
So now Billington has America's first crime by refusing forced conscription.
He is America's first murderer, and he pulls a total
trifecta by becoming the first person ever executed by the
state in the New World. Um, he is hanged, and

(05:21):
even after he's dead and buried, his family continues to
make trouble. His daughter, Dorcas is his granddaughter. Dorcas thank You,
is accused of fornication. Uh, his wife is accused and
charge of slander for another unrelated crime. She ends up
in the stocks and is whipped. Um and basically his

(05:43):
whole family just continues to reak havoc on Plymouth colony.
It's his legacy, right, But I had heard that Um
as far as Bradford goes, because he's so disliked Billington,
he may have painted, you know, a picture of him
that wasn't a hundred percent accurate. So I guess my
question to you is is it fact or fiction that
John Billington's deserves to be reviled as America's first murderer.

(06:07):
It really depends a lot on interpretation of history, And
I'm gonna go ahead and be gutsy and say that
it's fiction. He does not deserve the onus of being
America's first murderer, and it just to demystify a lot
of the facts surrounding him. Like you've mentioned, Bradford was
no fan of the Billington's. But the Billington's really, if

(06:29):
you put them in context with the other families in
Plymouth at this time, they might not have been that bad.
For instance, when his wife Eleanor was accused of slander.
No one ever recorded what it was, as she said,
And yeah, maybe Dorcas was accused of fornication, but a
lot of other twenties something for fornicating to some, even
with animals, definitely does bring things into perspective, into perspective. Actually,

(06:57):
and with John Billington himself, we're not really sure, you know,
if he was just finally pushed to his limits apparently
newcomen as a newcomer, he he was, you know, sort
of after a land grab. He didn't really have a
lot of property of his own because he wasn't on
the first shipment of pilgrims over to Plymouth, and so
he knew that Billington was rather despised among his fellow townspeople.

(07:20):
And so we take advantage of trespassing on Billington's property
and sort of picking fights with him. So so what
you're saying newcoman was no you know, babe in the woods,
no innocent doe wide perfect precisely, precisely, And so when
Billington had finally had it up to his eyeballs, he
sort of lured him into the woods. They picked a fight,

(07:40):
he was shot. But again, history is pretty fuzzy on
this point. We don't know if he was shot point
blank in the head, if he was shot in the
shoulder and got an infection and died a couple of
days later. But Billington ultimately paid the price. And as
far as his family legacy, you know, you remember how
John Jr. Wandered off and met up with the American
Indian When he came back, at records that he was

(08:03):
hung with beads, So he's wearing the mark of the
American Indian tribes. And maybe some people looked askew at
him and thought, we're not quite sure about this. Is
he Is he in some sort of secret contact with them?
But ultimately some historians think that John Junior Billington paved
diplomatic inroads with the American Indian tribe. I guess that's

(08:23):
true by basically forcing contact by wandering off on emmy
and be rescued. Right, So was it a peaceful that
they hand him over peacefully? I guess then, yeah, they did.
They did. And you know, it's funny because today the
Mayflower Society is one of the most elite organizations that
you can be a member of a side of you know,
from something like D. A. R. Or sons of the

(08:45):
American Revolution. You know, you have to go to a
lot of genealogical effort to trace back your roots to
the Pilgrims who came over. And there's a list of
twenty nine people from whom you can be descended in
order to claim membership and the Mayflower Society, and John
Billyton is on that list. So even though he turned
out to be kind of a rogue, at least in
the eyes of Bradford, you can still claim lineage from

(09:07):
him and be a part of this elite organization. Yeah,
even though the Pilgrims might not have claimed him for
their own, you can right well, I mean he was
on the Mayflower Affer all. He did sign the Mayflower Context.
So well, thank you very much for setting my head straight.
I'll be a little more objective from now on, Candids.
It sounds good, as one should always be when being
the facts of history. You can learn even more about

(09:29):
Billington's Don Billington's Dorcas Eleanor and the whole crew, and
who was America's first and murderer on how staff works
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