Standish, MYLES

Standish, MYLES, was born at Duxbury, Lancashire, about 1584, served in the Netherlands, and, though not a member of the Leyden congregation, sailed with the Mayflower colony to Massachusetts in 1620, and became the champion of the Pilgrims against the Indians. During the first winter his wife died, and the traditional account of his first effort to secure another partner has been made familiar by Longfellow. In 1622, warned of a plot to exterminate the English, he enticed three of the Indian leaders into a room at Weymouth, where his party, after a desperate fight, killed them, and a battle that followed ended in the flight of the natives. In 1632 he settled at Duxbury, Massachusetts, where he died, 3d October 1656. Standish was the military head of the colony, and for long its treasurer. A monument, 100 feet high and surmounted by a statue, has been erected to him on Captain's Hill, at Duxbury. See De Costa's Footprints of Miles Standish (1864); Henry Johnson's Exploits of Miles Standish (1897).