William White died shortly after arriving in Plymouth on the Mayflower. His son, Peregrine, was apparently the first child born in the colony but was born on board the Mayflower in Plymouth harbor so you can play games with the fact that he was or was not the first born in Plymouth. I'll give that title to Peregrine!
Our lineage to him is: William White (Abt 1590-1620), Resolved White (1616-1687), Samuel White (1646-1731), Penelope White (1686-1738), Susanna Crapo (1707-1757), Chaumont Demaranville (1731-1800), Marcy Demaranville (1774-?), Michael Haskell (1800-1875), Michael J. Haskell (1831-1871), Fannie E. Haskell (1857-1895), Watson T Fisher (1887-1925), Watson T Fisher (1925- )WILLIAM WHITE - From The Great Migration Begins
ORIGIN: Leiden, Holland (but see MF 1:96-97)i RESOLVED, b. say 1615; m. Scituate 8 April 1640 Judith Vassall [ PCR 8:19], daughter of WILLIAM VASSALL .
ii PEREGRINE, b. 4 December 1620 ("Whilst some were employed in this discovery [of a good harbor], it pleased God that Mistress White was brought abed of a son, which was called Peregrine" [ Mourt 31]); m. by 6 March 1648/9 Sarah Bassett, daughter of WILLIAM BASSETT [ PCR 2:183; MF 1:101-3].
COMMENTS: In his list of those who came in the Mayflower Bradford includes "Mr. William White and Susanna his wife and one son called Resolved, and one born a-shipboard called Peregrine, and two servants named William Holbeck and Edward Thompson" [ Bradford 442]. In his accounting of 1651 Bradford tells us that "Mr. White and his two servants died soon after their landing. His wife married with Mr. Winslow, as is before noted. His two sons are married and Resolved hath five children, Peregrine two, all living. So their increase are seven" [ Bradford 445]. Susanna (_____) (White) Winslow was not, as often claimed, sister of SAMUEL and EDWARD FULLER [ MF 1:96, 5:7; NEHGR 110:182-83]. (The resolution of this problem fundamentally comes down to the question of whether the William White who married Ann Fuller, sister of Samuel Fuller, at Leiden in 1612 was identical with the William White who came to Plymouth in 1620. The position of the sources cited earlier in this paragraph is that they were not identical. In 2000 Jeremy D. Bangs revisited the problem and argued that the possibility that the two William Whites were identical could not be dismissed, and in fact that it was more likely than not that they were identical [ NEHGR 154:109-18, 244].)
On 30 October 1623 EDWARD WINSLOW wrote from London to "his much respected Uncle Mr. Robert Jackson" who was clerk of the sewers at Spalding, Lincolnshire. In his letter he wrote that "almost two years since I wrote to my father-in-law declaring the death of his son White & the continued health of his daughter and her two children; also how that by God's providence she was become my wife.... My wife hath had one child by me, but it pleased him that gave it to take it again u nto himself; I left her with child at my departure (whom God preserve) but hope to be with her before her delivery" [ NEHGR 1955:242-43]. This remains the best clue to her identity.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTE: In 1975 Robert M. and Ruth W. Sherman published an account of William White and his descendants as part of the first volume of the Five Generations Project of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants [ MF 1:95-187]. Robert S. Wakefield revised and republished this material in 1997 [ MF 13].