Patriot to Passenger Project

While I was at the General Society of Mayflower Descendants’ Board of Assistants Meeting in Chicago two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of talking with the Florida Mayflower Society Historian Muriel Cushing about the Patriot to Passenger Project. This is a project that Muriel founded a few years ago, and it is a “work-in-progress”, which means that its usefulness grows as more people participate and share their Mayflower lines.

As 2020 nears, the 400^th Anniversary Commemoration of the arrival of the Mayflower in Plymouth, Massachusetts, more people are trying to apply to the Mayflower Society.  As a short cut to this often tedious process, some descendants are trying to connect their Revolutionary War Patriots (from the DAR lists of patriots) to a passenger on the Mayflower. 

According to the General Society of Mayflower Descendants’ Facebook page: “The Patriot to Passenger Project is a growing list of Patriots who descend from Mayflower passengers, in an effort to build a bridge between other heritage societies such as the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Sons of the American Revolution.  The Patriot to Passenger Project is a way to help others find their link to a Mayflower Pilgrim and it also benefits our Mayflower members to discover other Mayflower lines of descent so that they can submit supplemental applications to honor and recognize all of their ancestors.”

Click here for the “database” (actually a 135 page PDF with an alphabetic list of patriots): 

https://themayflowersociety.org/genealogy/patriots-to-passengers/  

I looked up the names of my Revolutionary War patriots and saw that I had a 5^th great grandfather named Nathaniel Treadwell (1753 – 1822) who served in the Revolutionary War.  His lineage was already included in my lineage application under Mayflower passenger Isaac Allerton.  However, his name did not appear on the Patriot to Passenger list.   Muriel Cushing’s email Flash1620@comcast.net is on the website, so I contacted her to let her know that Nathaniel Treadwell was missing.  She responded within two hours, and told me that she updates this list every month, and my ancestor would be in the new list. 

Even though it is not a true electronic database, it’s easy to scroll through the alphabetical PDF file to look for surnames that might match your family tree.  There are names of both men and women here, and there is also information linking the wives of some patriots to Mayflower passengers (however, these are listed alphabetically by the man’s name, which could be very inconvenient).

Here is an entry for a Revolutionary War veteran who lived in New Hampshire and his wife was descended from Pilgrim William White, a Mayflower passenger:

Howe, Phineas, (A131662) b. Lancaster, MA., 17 March 1732, d. Concord, N.H. after 1789, son of Phineas Howe and Abigail Bennett; m. Experience Pollard, b., Bolton, MA, 24 April 1741, dau. of William Pollard and Experience Wheeler, desc. of Pilgrim William White (MF 13:99). 

(Experience Pollard 6, Experience Wheeler 5, Josiah Wheeler 4, Elizabeth White 3, Resolved White 2, William White 1) 

  

Note that the number after the patriot’s name is the ancestor number from the DAR database.  The Mayflower Passenger is referenced to a Silver book entry.  The names in parenthesis show the lineage back to a pilgrim passenger on the Mayflower.  See how easy it is to add five or six or seven generations back to the Mayflower with this list of patriots!

Here is another Patriot, with two Mayflower connections.  It would be good luck to find one of these Patriots with six or seven or more lines!

Snow, Caleb (A106635), b. Raynham, MA, Ca. 1766, d. Plymouth, VT., 2 May 1847, son of Caleb Snow and Lydia (Wilbore) Barney, desc. of Pilgrims John Alden, William Mullins (MF 16:3:211) and Peter Brown, (MF 7:186); m. Keene, N.H., 18 Nov. 1790, Lydia Partridge.

(Caleb Snow 6, Caleb Snow 5, Ebenezer Snow 4, Elizabeth Alden 3, Joseph Alden 2, John Alden 1)

(Caleb Snow 6, Caleb Snow 5, Ebenezer Snow 4, Benjamin Snow 3, Rebecca Brown 2, Peter Brown 1)

Once you have found your link to a Mayflower passenger, I hope you would consider applying for membership in the General Society of Mayflower Descendants   https://www.themayflowersociety.org/   

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To Cite/Link to this blog post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Patriot to Passenger Project", Nutfield Genealogy, posted September 17, 2018, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2018/09/patriot-to-passenger-project.html: accessed [access date]).