Women of the Mayflower Project

You missed a good one!  The Women of the Mayflower Project

Well, you didn't miss it completely, because its an ongoing project.  On Saturday, 10 September 2011 in Plymouth, Massachusetts I attended a wonderful presentation of research by three renowned genealogists, Caleb Johnson, Simon Neale and Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs.  Their work will be published in upcoming editions of the Mayflower Quarterly, so you can catch up.

The Women of the Mayflower is a project sponsored by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants to identify and investigate the maiden names and families of the wives of the male passengers on the Mayflower.  Only three women's lingeages have been identified, Mary Norris Allerton, Joan Hurst Tilley, and Katherine White Carver.  Several others are still nameless, and their identities are still lost to time.  In 2010 Governor General Judith Swan of the Mayflower Society came to New Hampshire and spoke about this project, and I've been very interested in the research ever since.

The first researcher who presented his research was Caleb Johnson, who has a wonderful website, and has authored books including Here I Shall Die Ashore (the story of Stephen Hopkins) and The Mayflower and Her Passengers.  He was assigned to find the ancestry of Alice Mullins, mother of Priscilla Mullins Alden.  He did exhaustive research in all the villages where William Mullins lived, including looking at the extended family of all the Mullins relatives, business contacts, and people named in other records.  This is what kind of research is possible when you are funded by the Mayflower Society! His charts and slides took my breath away, with his possibilities of extended kinship found in records. No definite conclusions were made, but many discoveries were made on the Mullins family.

Simon Neale is from Kew's National Archives in the United Kingdom.  He was assigned to research the two wives of Stephen Hopkins. He also did exhaustive research on Hopkins families in London. The last to present was Jeremy Bangs, who did research on the Walloon Mayflower families such as Delano and Cooke.  Jeremy is the author of many books including Strangers and Pilgrims, Travelers and Sojourners, 2009, and Indian Deeds, 2002.  If you have read his books, you know that he does meticulous work with many footnotes and details.  His research reflected this attention to leaving no stone unturned as he he traveled from France and Holland to England.  His story of finding kinships among the records in Norwich, England was fascinating. 

In Plymouth, Massachusetts, across the street from Plymouth Rock is a memorial to the Women of the Mayflower.  It was erected in 1920 on the 300th anniversary of the arrival of the Mayflower in the New World.  On the back of the memorial is the following list of names.  Remember, in 1920 this was all that was known of the women and girl passengers on the Mayflower.  Some of the women have been identified since 1920, but we have a long way to go.  As Caleb Johnson pointed out during the lecture, although this was exhaustive research, some women's names may never be known.  

Mary Norris Allerton

Mary Allerton

Remember Allerton

Eleanor Billington

Mary Brewster

-------------- Chilton

Mary Chilton

Sarah Eaton

--------------- Fuller

Elizabeth Hopkins          now identified as Elizabeth Fisher Hopkins

Constance Hopkins

Alice Mullins

Priscilla Mullins

-------------  Tilley            now identified as Joan Hurst Tilley

Elizabeth Tilley

Susanna Fuller White     "Fuller" is not her maiden name

Dorothy Bradford           now identified as Dorothy May Bradford

Katherine Carver           now identified as Katherine White Carver

Maid Servant of the Carvers, name unknown    now known only as Dorothy

Humility Cooper

Demaris Hopkins

------------ Martin            now identified as Mary Prower Martin

Desire Minter

Ellen More

Alice Rigdale

Rose Standish

Ann Tilley

------------- Tinker

Elizabeth Winslow         now identified as Elizabeth Barker Winslow

From the GSMD website https://sites.google.com/site/womenofthemayflower/home/announcing-a-presentation-of-new-research

Women of the Mayflower, from Caleb Johnson's website http://www.mayflowerhistory.com/History/women.php

Jeremy Bang's American Pilgrim Museum in Leiden, The Netherlands http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~netlapm/Page01.htm

--------------------

Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo 

“A Baaaad Ancestor is Good to Find!”

International Blacksheep Society of Genealogists
“A Baaaad Ancestor is Good to Find!”

The International Blacksheep Society of Genealogists (IBSSG) website is a very interesting support group for those who can trace a direct family line to a thief, deserter, town drunk, or any other type of anti social characters. For those of you too shy to admit such relationships, the Blacksheep Society has a “Tender Lamb” category which will keep your identity a secret! Qualification for IBSSG membership is granted on the mailing list blacksheep@rootsweb.com by posting your relationship to the family “blacksheep”, and why you think he or she is the blacksheep of your family. Private submissions can be made to the Tender Lambs coordinator. There are no dues. The coordinators of the lists were happy to accept my email questions, which were answered privately.

I posted a question to the coordinators, “What benefit would Mayflower Society members find by joining IBSSG?” I quickly received several emails from members who were happy to share their experiences. The first person who contacted me was a John Billington descendant! She said “My personal genealogy contained only two black sheep when I joined the society and since then I have accrued several more including John Billington of the Mayflower. My first reaction upon discovering I was a Mayflower descendant was one of extreme joy and then it was, admittedly, a bit of a letdown to discover both John and his son Francis were going to join my list of unconventional black sheep family members. A little more research revealed the marriage of Francis Billington's daughter, Martha, to Francis Eaton's son, Samuel. My Mayflower connection then balanced out between my conventional and black sheep ancestors….I feel in no way responsible for the actions of my ancestors but they are every bit part of me and I would NEVER try to hide them in the proverbial closet. Their blood runs through my veins and I am happy that it does.... they are me and I am them ~ gratefully!”

The Blacksheep Society list coordinator, Jeffrey Scism, sent me some statistics. There are currently about 115 members contributing to the primary list, but it has been as high as 600 members. The group began in October 1996, and was “official” as of January 1, 1997 with 42 charter members. Jeff was kind enough to write: “Our purpose is to help each other find ways around hidden information on blacksheep ancestors, by suggesting places to check, doing look-ups, and by being supportive.”

Anyone who has worked on a family tree knows that there are always relatives no one wants to talk about, and finding information can sometimes be a daunting task. The International Blacksheep Society of Genealogists is here to help you with this task, and to provide a social network to share the humorous and human side to the stories behind your ancestors. For example: between 1717 and 1775 fifty thousand English convicts chose deportation to the colonies for seven years rather than hang. The convictions were over stealing bread, cutting down trees without permission, or merely standing mute in front of one’s “betters.” Chances are that one of your colonial ancestors fits this category, too!

Over the past few months I have scanned some of the on-going conversations on the IBSSG website, and found some very interesting stories. There was a sad story of a town drunk, and the saga of a descendant who found a newspaper article in a 1941 newspaper describing his death in the streets. Through the help of volunteers the descendant was able to put together the earlier, happier details of her ancestor’s life. Other postings listed how to retrieve records on ancestors who died in asylums, and how to petition the court for the ability to view these records. It was also interesting to see that some behavior labeled as “anti social” in the past is considered acceptable today- such as divorce, gambling, or having children out of wedlock.

My own family tree contains several nasty accusers at the Salem Witch trials, a pirate, an inmate at the “Danvers Insane Asylum,” Baker Nason- who killed his brother with an oar halfway across the Piscataqua River in 1693, and youthful Mayflower passenger Ned Doty- accused of dueling, deceit and slander, among other assorted offenses. Ned Doty eventually settled down and overcame his juvenile antics to become an average member of the Plymouth community, because not many records are available on him after his marriage. Sometimes the records of our “Blacksheep” ancestors are much more interesting than the records of our more polite, law abiding family members!

You can find the International Blacksheep Society of Genealogists at http://ibssg.org/blacksheep/

This is an article I originally wrote for “The Shallop” Volume 33, Number 2, page 4, the newsletter of the New Hampshire Society of Mayflower Descendants, Fall issue, 2009

Copyright 2009, Heather Wilkinson Rojo