Several years ago at Thanksgiving, my aunt presented the family with a pedigree chart showing how we were related to Stephen Hopkins, one of the original Mayflower passengers.
Even more interesting was the fact that Stephen wasn’t the paragon of Puritan virtue I had been taught to venerate in elementary school. He had been hired to accompany the Pilgrims by a group called the Merchant Adventurers, who financed the trip in hopes of turning a profit in the New World.
But even if Stephen wasn’t a martyr for religious freedom, I am still proud of his heritage.
He was recruited to travel with the Mayflower because he’d spent two years in Jamestown and knew what it took to start a colony from scratch. He’d also had experience with the Native Americans, so he was one of the emissaries who helped establish peaceful relations with the local tribe.
And historians believe it may have been his rambunctiousness in part that caused the Pilgrims to draft the Mayflower Compact—to establish some civil order.
YOUR MAYFLOWER ROOTS
Want to get in touch with your Mayflower roots? The “Find Famous Relatives” feature on Ancestry.com could help. It’s a quick way to see if you have a possible connection to presidents, royalty, inventors, and other notable figures in history—including Mayflower passengers.
Click here to learn how to use the “Find Famous Relatives” feature.
If you’re more serious about your Mayflower heritage, you could try to prove your lineage through the Mayflower Society—one of the oldest and largest historical societies in North America (currently there are 28,000 members).
All you have to do is submit a chart of names showing how you relate to one of the 29 passengers (26 men and 3 women) who survived the first winter at Plymouth and had children. Each state chapter has a historian who will look over your family line to see which connections have already been proven and which connections still need to be documented. And most are willing to assist you as you try to fill in the gaps.
But if that’s too much work, just sit back and enjoy a little Mayflower trivia. Here are 10 things you may—or may not—have known about the Mayflower.
Jana Lloyd is editor of the Ancestry.com monthly newsletter. She can be reached at AMUeditor@ancestry.com but cannot assist with personal research questions.
