Solomon Prower

BIRTH:  About 1596 at Great Burstead, Billericay, co. Essex, England, probably the son of Edward and Mary Prower.
MARRIAGE:  Unmarried.
DEATH:  Sometime the first winter at Plymouth, likely between January and March 1621.

Solomon Prower first appears in the records of Great Burstead on 15 September 1619, when an Essex Quarter Sessions presentment reports that young single man, Solomon Prower, was on the King's Watch, and attempted to arrest a drunk blacksmith, John Paprell, who resisted arrest and exclaimed that he "cared neither for the King's Majesty nor for such Jack-an-Apes slaves as he was."

Six months later, on 14 March 1619/20, Solomon Prower was presented by the local vicar in the Archdeaconry Court for "refusing to answer me at all unlesse I would aske him some questions in some other catechism."  A note in Latin indicates Solomon personally appeared.  The incident took place during Confirmation, when Solomon was supposed to read a scripted response from the Book of Common Prayer when asked who gave him his name.  Instead of answering "from my godfathers and godmothers in my baptism," he replied that he did not know who gave him his name, as his father was dead and he did not know his godfathers.  Like his stepfather Christopher Martin, he was refusing to participate in some of the rituals of the Church of England, expressing his Puritan inclinations.

Solomon Prower came on the Mayflower with his step-father Christopher Martin and his mother Mary.  He died the first winter at Plymouth.  News of his death would have reached his family back in England in the spring of 1621.  On 19 August 1621, Solomon Prower's older brother, Edward, baptized his eldest son, naming him Solomon.  When the young infant died, he named his second son Solomon as well, baptizing him on 24 November 1622.