Background
Standish was born in c. 1584 in Chorley, England.
military officer captainm advisor
Standish was born in c. 1584 in Chorley, England.
The circumstances are vague at best concerning Standish's early military career in Holland. Nathaniel Philbrick refers to Standish as a "mercenary", suggesting that he was a hired soldier of fortune seeking opportunity in Holland, but Justin Winsor claims that Standish received a lieutenant's commission in the English army and was subsequently promoted to captain in Holland. Jeremy Bangs, a leading scholar of Pilgrim history, noted that Standish likely served under Sir Horatio Vere, an English general who had recruited soldiers in both Lancashire and the Isle of Man, among other places, and who led the English troops in Holland at the time when Standish was there.
Standish was certainly still in Holland in 1620 and living in Leiden when he was hired by a group of refugee Puritan dissenters from England to act as their adviser on military matters.
On August 5, 1620, the Mayflower departed from England with Standish aboard. On November 9, 1620, lookouts spotted land, but it was quickly appreciated that their location was about 200 miles east-northeast of their planned destination of northern Virginia, near what is now called Cape Cod. They anchored at the hook on November 11, but not before signing a significant document. The leaders of the colony wrote the Mayflower Compact to ensure a degree of law and order in this place where they had not been granted a patent to settle. Myles Standish was one of the 41 men who signed the document. When the Mayflower was anchored off Cape Cod, Standish urged the colony's leaders to allow him to take a party ashore to find a suitable place for settlement. On November 15, 1620, he led 16 men in a foot exploration of the northern portion of the Cape. On December 11, a group of 18 settlers, including Standish, made an extended exploration of the shore of Cape Cod by boat, spending their nights ashore surrounded by makeshift barricades of tree branches. After further exploration, the Pilgrims chose a location in present-day Plymouth Bay in late December 1620 as the site for their settlement. Standish provided important counsel on the placement of a small fort in which cannon were mounted, and on the layout of the first houses for maximum defensibility. Only one house (consisting of a single room) had been built when illness struck the settlers. Of the roughly 100 who first arrived, only 50 survived the first winter. Standish's wife Rose died in January.
By February 1621, the colonists had sighted Native Americans several times, but there had been no communication. The men of the colony were anxious to prepare themselves in case of hostilities, so they formed a militia on February 17, 1621 consisting of all able-bodied men, electing Standish as their commander. The leaders of Plymouth Colony had already hired him for that role, but this vote ratified the decision by democratic process. The men of Plymouth Colony continued to re-elect him to that position for the remainder of his life. As captain of the militia, Standish regularly drilled his men in the use of pikes and muskets. Together with William Bradforf, who was governor by that time, they defended Plymouth Colony from Native Americans.
In 1625, Plymouth Colony leaders appointed Standish to travel to London to negotiate new terms with the Merchant Adventurers. In 1626 the Pilgrims paid their debts and the leaders of Plymouth Colony were now free of the directives of the Merchant Adventurers, and they exerted their new-found autonomy by organizing a land division in 1627.
There are indications that Standish began to seek a quieter life by 1635 (after the Penobscot expedition), maintaining the livestock and fields of his Duxbury farm. He was about 51 years old at that time, and he began to relinquish the responsibility of defending the colony to a younger generation. During the 1640s, Standish took on an increasingly administrative role. He served as a surveyor of highways, as Treasurer of the Colony from 1644 to 1649, and on various committees to lay out boundaries of new towns and inspect waterways. Standish died on October 3, 1656 of "strangullion" or strangury, a condition often associated with kidney stones or bladder cancer.
Standish was married twice and had 7 children.
Captain