This Mother’s Day, I find myself especially reflective. It’s the first time I’ll watch my daughter celebrate as a mother herself. That moment—watching your child become someone else’s mother—changes how you think about the women who came before. It’s made me consider not just the mothers I’ve known, but the long line of mothers who shaped my life in ways seen and unseen.

In following my maternal line back through time, I reached a woman who stands at the edge of recorded memory: my 11th great-grandmother, Priscilla Johnson.

She was born around 1617. Her maiden name has been lost to time—a silence that speaks volumes about the erasure of women’s identities in the earliest colonial records. But what we do know is powerful: Priscilla lived a life that spanned nearly nine decades in one of the most unforgiving eras of American history. She was a founding settler of York, Maine.

A Life on the Edge of the Frontier

Priscilla’s husband, Edward Johnson (1593–1687), was one of the earliest English colonists to arrive in New England. He sailed on the Sparrow in 1622 as part of Thomas Weston’s ill-fated venture to establish a trading colony at Wessagusset (modern-day Weymouth, Massachusetts). The colony quickly collapsed due to poor planning and conflict with Indigenous peoples. Edward survived and re-established himself in Maine by 1631, where he helped found York.

Edward became a respected leader—serving as Deputy, Commissioner, and Justice of the Peace—and acquired land in what was then a remote and dangerous outpost. Sometime in the 1640s, Priscilla married Edward and began raising a family. Together, they helped shape the early civic and spiritual fabric of the community.

Their home was located on the north side of the York River, near what is now the intersection of Lindsey Road and Organug Road—just east of Sewall’s Bridge.

Historical maps place their lot across from Point Bolleyne, near the home of another early settler, Edward Godfrey. If you were to visit York today, you could stand near this intersection and be within walking distance of where Priscilla likely lived, worked, and raised her children. It’s a quiet area now, but it was once the front line of colonial life.

The Candlemas Massacre

On January 24, 1692, during King William’s War, the town of York was attacked in what became known as the Candlemas Massacre. A group of 150 to 300 Abenaki warriors, supported by the French, launched a coordinated raid, burning homes and killing settlers. Between 40 and 100 people were killed, and approximately 80 were taken captive and marched north to Quebec.

Priscilla was there. By that time, she was 75 years old and a widow—Edward had died in 1687. She had already lived through hunger, childbirth in a wilderness, and decades of tension with Indigenous neighbors. And still, she survived the massacre.

Most homes on the north side of the York River—including likely hers—were burned to the ground. While there’s no record of what happened to the original Johnson homestead, it almost certainly did not survive the attack. Priscilla, somehow, did. We don’t know how. There’s no journal, no letter, no town record that tells us the details. Only that she lived for another 14 years, dying in October 1706 at the age of 89—a nearly mythical lifespan for her time.

The Silent Thread That Connects Us

I descend through Priscilla’s daughter Deborah and her husband John Harmon—another thread in a long maternal tapestry.

Priscilla’s name may be incomplete, and her voice lost to the silence of records that often ignored women. But her impact is undeniable. Her daughter too survived war and widowhood and raised children who would help shape early Maine. Her granddaughter Mary Harmon, and every daughter thereafter, continued a line that stretches, unbroken, to me and to my daughter.

And now, on Mother’s Day, I choose to remember her—not just as a name in a tree, but as a real woman who endured, built, and birthed a legacy. The women who came after her—Deborah, Mary, and all the mothers in between—carried that legacy forward.

Priscilla raised children in the shadow of war. She kept a home in a place where the forest was close, and danger closer. She bore grief, uncertainty, and perhaps fear. And still—she lasted.

Her name may be incomplete. Her voice lost. But her legacy lives.

This Mother’s Day, as I watch my own daughter begin her journey in motherhood, I honor the mothers who shaped ours. I see more clearly than ever how each generation leaves its imprint on the next—through resilience, example, and love passed down in everyday acts.

And I remember: I come from a line of survivors.

Current day street view of where Edward and Priscilla Johnson’s home likely stood.