Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined today as always by Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: Josh with the Canna Fresca in the studio. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: asked our producer Jerry if I could bring it in
Speaker 1: and she said yes. I was trying to sound like
Speaker 1: a game of clue, in which she traced out a murderer.
Speaker 1: Oh gotcha, that's funny that you bring that up, because
Speaker 1: I have a question about murder. It's a murder. Most
Speaker 1: fowl actually murder, he spoke. Yeah. So I was looking
Speaker 1: at some crime statistics during lunch, which I usually do
Speaker 1: UH and I found out that the murder rate in
Speaker 1: the US declined by one point one percent in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven. Did you know that that's excellent news? It is,
Speaker 1: it's good news. The bad news is about seventeen thousand
Speaker 1: people still lost their lives at the hands of somebody else.
Speaker 1: But if you really look at the UH these lists
Speaker 1: of statistics, the US ranks some four per capita in
Speaker 1: UH in murders. India's at the first they had like
Speaker 1: thirty four thousand murders, but they also have like a billion,
Speaker 1: you know, citizens, so it kind of works out. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I started thinking, you know, India has been around
Speaker 1: a really long time, uh, and there's probably been so
Speaker 1: many murders. We have no idea who committed the first
Speaker 1: murder in India, right, yeah, but we actually know who
Speaker 1: did that. In the US. I know you're a fan
Speaker 1: of a first some number of ones and top tens
Speaker 1: and things like that, we actually know that John Billington
Speaker 1: was the very first murderer in America. That is exactly right.
Speaker 1: His Uh, he had a pretty checkered past, right, he did.
Speaker 1: He he came over on the Mayflower originally, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't a Puritan by anyone stretch of the imagination. He
Speaker 1: was actually in the group called the strangers, right, The
Speaker 1: people aboard the Mayflower divided themselves into the Saints and
Speaker 1: strangers groups. And essentially, if you were a saint and
Speaker 1: then that you are a Puritan, you are escaping religious persecution.
Speaker 1: If you were a stranger, however, you've even coming over
Speaker 1: for more mercenary means, or perhaps you just wanted to
Speaker 1: start life anew or make some money mercenary means. Yes,
Speaker 1: Oh gotcha, I thought you meant like to, you know,
Speaker 1: just kill, kill, kill, that kind of thing, like John Billington's.
Speaker 1: Ah yeah, back to him, you know their troubles that
Speaker 1: It wasn't just Mr John Billington' that was that was
Speaker 1: a handful his whole family, just cause headache after a
Speaker 1: headache for the Puritans in Plymouth Colony. Right even on
Speaker 1: the way over on the Mayflower Um, one of his
Speaker 1: sons started firing his father's gun in a closed room
Speaker 1: with an open keg of black powder. Could have just
Speaker 1: torn the ship, the ship to shreds. Luckily it didn't,
Speaker 1: and as far as I know, the boy probably got
Speaker 1: a pretty sound thrashing for it. And it gets worse
Speaker 1: because once they actually landed at Plymouth, essentially John Billington
Speaker 1: refused to serve in the local militia. Yeah, which I
Speaker 1: think they count as America's crime. Yeah. Yeah. He Miles
Speaker 1: Standish actually tried to create a conscription forced military service
Speaker 1: and Mr Billington would have nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1: And he was apparently not much of a team player well,
Speaker 1: and the reason for that may be attributed to the
Speaker 1: fact that he didn't align all of his beliefs with
Speaker 1: the Puritan lifestyle, and all of the leaders, the elected
Speaker 1: leaders at least, were of Puritan background, and he saw
Speaker 1: things a little bit different like he he definitely did.
Speaker 1: He was accused of basically an anti government conspiracy, A
Speaker 1: moved to top all the Puritan leaders. Um. And, like
Speaker 1: I said, he wasn't the only Billington who was kind
Speaker 1: of problematic. One of his sons wandered off, gets himself
Speaker 1: captured by Native Americans, and like a search and rescue
Speaker 1: party of ten men had to go out and find
Speaker 1: him a couple of weeks. Yeah, they actually located him
Speaker 1: near Cape Cod so it wasn't just h and aimless wandering.
Speaker 1: He really kind of booked it and then he got captured.
Speaker 1: They took him pretty far away exactly, so they had
Speaker 1: to go rescue him. They put all their lives in jeopardy.
Speaker 1: They they they put the colonists lives in jeopardy by alerting,
Speaker 1: you know, their presence to these to these tribes who
Speaker 1: had no idea who they were there. Um And uh
Speaker 1: So Billington's eventually gets this horrible reputation around there. Uh
Speaker 1: William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth Colony, hates him. I
Speaker 1: mean just can't stand him, or his family finds him profane.
Speaker 1: I think he says he calls him a knave, which
Speaker 1: means a scoundrel. Um Bradford. If Bradford doesn't like you,
Speaker 1: you're probably in big trouble. Although I don't think Bradford
Speaker 1: made much trouble for Billington's. I think Billington made it
Speaker 1: for himself. Right. There was this guy named William Newcoman,
Speaker 1: and he was actually a newcomer to the colonies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't know, you know, what the score was with
Speaker 1: the Billington's. And apparently one day is out on Billington's
Speaker 1: property and and gets in a quarrel with him, and
Speaker 1: Billington shoots him and kills him. Right, America's first murder.
Speaker 1: So now Billington has America's first crime by refusing forced conscription.
Speaker 1: He is America's first murderer, and he pulls a total
Speaker 1: trifecta by becoming the first person ever executed by the
Speaker 1: state in the New World. Um, he is hanged, and
Speaker 1: even after he's dead and buried, his family continues to
Speaker 1: make trouble. His daughter, Dorcas is his granddaughter. Dorcas thank You,
Speaker 1: is accused of fornication. Uh, his wife is accused and
Speaker 1: charge of slander for another unrelated crime. She ends up
Speaker 1: in the stocks and is whipped. Um and basically his
Speaker 1: whole family just continues to reak havoc on Plymouth colony.
Speaker 1: It's his legacy, right, But I had heard that Um
Speaker 1: as far as Bradford goes, because he's so disliked Billington,
Speaker 1: he may have painted, you know, a picture of him
Speaker 1: that wasn't a hundred percent accurate. So I guess my
Speaker 1: question to you is is it fact or fiction that
Speaker 1: John Billington's deserves to be reviled as America's first murderer.
Speaker 1: It really depends a lot on interpretation of history, And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and be gutsy and say that
Speaker 1: it's fiction. He does not deserve the onus of being
Speaker 1: America's first murderer, and it just to demystify a lot
Speaker 1: of the facts surrounding him. Like you've mentioned, Bradford was
Speaker 1: no fan of the Billington's. But the Billington's really, if
Speaker 1: you put them in context with the other families in
Speaker 1: Plymouth at this time, they might not have been that bad.
Speaker 1: For instance, when his wife Eleanor was accused of slander.
Speaker 1: No one ever recorded what it was, as she said,
Speaker 1: And yeah, maybe Dorcas was accused of fornication, but a
Speaker 1: lot of other twenties something for fornicating to some, even
Speaker 1: with animals, definitely does bring things into perspective, into perspective. Actually,
Speaker 1: and with John Billington himself, we're not really sure, you know,
Speaker 1: if he was just finally pushed to his limits apparently
Speaker 1: newcomen as a newcomer, he he was, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of after a land grab. He didn't really have a
Speaker 1: lot of property of his own because he wasn't on
Speaker 1: the first shipment of pilgrims over to Plymouth, and so
Speaker 1: he knew that Billington was rather despised among his fellow townspeople.
Speaker 1: And so we take advantage of trespassing on Billington's property
Speaker 1: and sort of picking fights with him. So so what
Speaker 1: you're saying newcoman was no you know, babe in the woods,
Speaker 1: no innocent doe wide perfect precisely, precisely, And so when
Speaker 1: Billington had finally had it up to his eyeballs, he
Speaker 1: sort of lured him into the woods. They picked a fight,
Speaker 1: he was shot. But again, history is pretty fuzzy on
Speaker 1: this point. We don't know if he was shot point
Speaker 1: blank in the head, if he was shot in the
Speaker 1: shoulder and got an infection and died a couple of
Speaker 1: days later. But Billington ultimately paid the price. And as
Speaker 1: far as his family legacy, you know, you remember how
Speaker 1: John Jr. Wandered off and met up with the American
Speaker 1: Indian When he came back, at records that he was
Speaker 1: hung with beads, So he's wearing the mark of the
Speaker 1: American Indian tribes. And maybe some people looked askew at
Speaker 1: him and thought, we're not quite sure about this. Is
Speaker 1: he Is he in some sort of secret contact with them?
Speaker 1: But ultimately some historians think that John Junior Billington paved
Speaker 1: diplomatic inroads with the American Indian tribe. I guess that's
Speaker 1: true by basically forcing contact by wandering off on emmy
Speaker 1: and be rescued. Right, So was it a peaceful that
Speaker 1: they hand him over peacefully? I guess then, yeah, they did.
Speaker 1: They did. And you know, it's funny because today the
Speaker 1: Mayflower Society is one of the most elite organizations that
Speaker 1: you can be a member of a side of you know,
Speaker 1: from something like D. A. R. Or sons of the
Speaker 1: American Revolution. You know, you have to go to a
Speaker 1: lot of genealogical effort to trace back your roots to
Speaker 1: the Pilgrims who came over. And there's a list of
Speaker 1: twenty nine people from whom you can be descended in
Speaker 1: order to claim membership and the Mayflower Society, and John
Speaker 1: Billyton is on that list. So even though he turned
Speaker 1: out to be kind of a rogue, at least in
Speaker 1: the eyes of Bradford, you can still claim lineage from
Speaker 1: him and be a part of this elite organization. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even though the Pilgrims might not have claimed him for
Speaker 1: their own, you can right well, I mean he was
Speaker 1: on the Mayflower Affer all. He did sign the Mayflower Context.
Speaker 1: So well, thank you very much for setting my head straight.
Speaker 1: I'll be a little more objective from now on, Candids.
Speaker 1: It sounds good, as one should always be when being
Speaker 1: the facts of history. You can learn even more about
Speaker 1: Billington's Don Billington's Dorcas Eleanor and the whole crew, and
Speaker 1: who was America's first and murderer on how staff works
Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics.
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