Alden (awl' den), John (born 1589; dies 1689), one of the Pilgrim fathers, who came over in the Mayflower in 1620. For more than fifty years he was a magistrate of Plymouth colony. Miles Standish once sent him to a lady with an offer of marriage, but she, liking John better, said, "Prithee, John, why do you not speak for yourself?"—and John married her. The story is told by Longfellow in his Courtship of Miles Standish.
