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| Celebrating our Mayflower ancestry! |
Every year, just before Thanksgiving, some folks want to know if they have a ancestor from the
1620 ship Mayflower. My first advice is
that it will probably take you more than a few weeks to prove a lineage back to
someone born in the late 1500s, who might qualify as a passenger on this
ship. After all, it has been about
thirteen or fourteen generations since those passengers were born. But, if you work hard at it, you might be
able to introduce your Mayflower passenger ancestor to your friends and family
around the 2015 Thanksgiving table.
Mayflower descendants live all over the globe. There are active Mayflower Societies in all
50 states, Washington DC, and Canada.
Societies are being considered for the United Kingdom and Australia
because there are descendants living there, too. Many descendants live in the Netherlands,
because the Pilgrim families left siblings and married children behind in
Leiden. There are good numbers of other
descendants scattered across the map.
Are you one of them?
1. Start with
yourself and work backwards in time. It
is impossible to start with a passenger and try to work forward to yourself
along a lineage. Besides, there were 102
passengers. Even if grandma swears you
descend from William Bradford, you just might be a descendant of Myles Standish
or Priscilla Mullins. You will never know unless you follow proper genealogical
practices of starting now and working back through the generations.
2. Become familiar
with the surnames of the 102 passengers, their descendants and where they lived. Yes, BREWSTER is one of the Mayflower names,
but there was also an early Brewster family in New Hampshire. They were not related. Some of the passengers
had common names like BROWN and WHITE.
However, if your BROWNS lived in southeastern Massachusetts in the 1600s
and 1700s, this is worth researching. You can find a complete list of passengers
with known descendants are at these links:
3. If you can work
your family tree back to about the mid 1700s your next step is to review the
Silver Books published by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. These are books produced by the “Five
Generations Project” to document the first five generations of each Mayflower
passenger. Some of the finest colonial genealogists have been part of this
project. Most of these lineages have
been published, and the project is now called “Mayflower Families in Progress”
as they continue researching the sixth and seventh generations. You can find these books in good genealogy
libraries, book stores, and for sale online at this link:
https://www.themayflowersociety.org/membership-info16 For a good listing of all the books, see
this link:
http://mayflowerhistory.com/mayflower5g
4. Use primary source documents (birth, marriage and death
records) if you are planning to submit your research to a lineage society. Deeds, probate (wills), gravestones, diaries
and family bibles have also been used to establish lineage. Some of this is available on the internet,
and are acceptible if they are scanned images of original documents such as
censuses and birth records. Note all
records with proper citations (page numbers, microfilm numbers, etc.). User submitted trees on
www.familysearch.org and
www.ancestry.org are not acceptable because
they lack documentation, but you can use them as clues to help you find primary
source materials. Don’t forget to make
photocopies of everything you find. Click this link to read about “The Best
Records to Prove your Case” by Mayflower genealogist Alicia Crane Williams:
5. In rare cases, you
might want to consider DNA testing. Many
of the Pilgrim family associations have DNA projects. However, for acceptance into a lineage society
such as the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, DNA testing must be
backed up with a paper trail. DNA can
help establish that two men descend from a common ancestor. Several DNA tests have been used to in the
lineage application process for GSMD.
Let’s say you find a link to one of the Mayflower
families. What happens next?
1.
Congratulations! You are connected
to some of the most well researched group of immigrants on the planet
earth. There are endless books,
articles, blog posts and all sorts of stories, documents and things to learn
about your ancestor to keep you busy for quite some time. New research is being
published every year.
2. You've earned your
bragging rights. Not just that you have
a famous ancestor, but you have done an impressive job at researching thirteen
or fourteen generations. You can now
take those documents and research papers and apply to family associations (more
than half the Mayflower families have family associations), to the General
Society of Mayflower Descendants, Colonial Dames, or any number of other
lineage societies. Here is a link to the
“Join GSMD” webpage:
https://www.themayflowersociety.org/membership-info16
3. Double check your
research against these links to common Mayflower genealogy hoaxes:
4. If the historian
of a lineage society questions your lineage application papers, don’t
worry. They are just asking you to
clarify a point with additional documentation.
They usually can help point you where to look for that additional piece
of information. Remember that lineage
societies are actively recruiting for new members, they don’t want to keep you
out of the club!
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Some good links for online information on the Mayflower
Passengers:
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Good Books (there are many, but here’s a good place to
start):
The Great Migration Series, The Great Migration Begins
(3 volumes) and The Great Migration (7
volumes) by Robert Anderson published by the New England Historic Genealogical
Society
The Pilgrim Migration: Immigrants to Plymouth Colony, 1620 – 1633 by Robert Anderson, NEHGS, 2007
William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, edited by
Caleb Johnson, 2006
The Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War, by
Nathaniel Philbrick, 2007
Strangers and Pilgrims, Travellers and Sojourners: Leiden and the
Foundations of Plymouth Plantation, by Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs, 2009
Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A
New History, by Nick Bunker, 2010
