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Miles Standish
By patti | September 23, 2008
I just finished reading Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by Nathaniel Philbrick. It was excellent: a very readable account of the years from the founding of Plymouth to the end of King Philip’s War (1676). There are lots of interesting parts to the book. I found myself wanting to learn more about Benjamin Church who figures greatly in the ending of the war. I thought the following about Miles Standish was interesting:
In 1891, the body of Miles Standish was exhumed by a group that included the Duxbury Episcopal minister, a medical doctor, and several Standish descendants. It was perhaps appropriate that the man who had overseen the pilfering of Native graves during the winter of 1620 [the author by no means attributes all the evils of the times to the wicked white men] was subjected to a similar indignity 271 years later. His skull and bones were carefully measured, and the doctor claimed that “the bones indicated a man of tremendous physique and strength.” The skull was surprisingly large and “of a peculiar formation,” and the minister tactfully pointed out that several of the Standish descendants standing beside the grave that day had similarly shaped heads. There was only one tooth left in Standish’s lower jaw, and what hair remained on the skull was reddish brown and mixed with gray. But what surprised all of them was the length of the skeleton — five feet seven inches, an average height for a man in the seventeenth century. Had Standish been taller than was previously thought?
September 24th, 2008 at 6:00 am
For some reason, I always pictured him short. I wonder why? Short and powerful with red hair. Maybe I got my impressions from someone who was familiar with the exhumation?
September 24th, 2008 at 7:33 am
I think most history books do say that he was short. Maybe something got lost in the context of this. There was an explanation following this excerpt that explained why his exhumed remains might make him seem taller ( but still at 5′7″ — not very tall by our standards) even though it has been believed that he was shorter than that.