20 November 2025
18 November 2025
JAMESTOWN... ROANOKE... AND THEN THE PILGRIMS : HOW THEY MADE IT
The earliest American history is that of the Native Americans or pre-Colonial. Then Columbus and the Spanish explorers, then early colonies of the English, Dutch... Of course, there's a possibility that many others made it to our shores through migration, exploration, and ship wrecks.
I thought this video by the World History Channel was well made and interesting...
The Pilgrims were religious Christians who were in conflict with the Protestant Church of England. They fled due to religious prosecution. King James gave permission for them to establish a colony in Virginia and Virginia was a great expanse at the time including parts of what is Pennsylvania and North Carolina today. William Bradford, one of those passengers on the ship named the Mayflower, left a journal and so we know a lot about their voyage... They departed weeks late and their provision ship, the Speedwell, leaked so they went on without it. They bravely went to an unknown country, going onshore far from their original notions of a destination and faced a harsh winter climate. They had not landed in Virginia at all.
11 November 2025
THE GENERAL SOCIETY OF MAYFLOWER DESCENDANTS : SILVER BOOK PROJECT
SILVER BOOK PROJECT
Excerpt: Today, there are twenty-two volumes of the Silver Books with multiple parts that make up the forty-two book catalog. Volumes One, Two, and Five have been superseded and are no longer in print. The Mayflower Society publishes all the Silver Books which are for sale in the The Mayflower Society store and on the website. The fifth generation is digitized, indexed, and available on the New England Historic Genealogical Society website in a database called Mayflower Families Fifth Generation Descendants, 1700-1880.The Silver Books Project team consists of researchers, reviewers, and editors. They are skilled genealogists and writers that analyze complex genealogical problems and time periods where various records may or may not be available. When vital records aren’t available, other sources are used to link the generations together.
There are various volumes being revised and updated at any given point. The goal is to publish research on all families through generation seven, naming generation eight. Some volumes have not been updated for decades, but we plan to address every family. It takes many hours of research to complete a book, often years in the making.
For an idea imagined in 1959, the project is still going strong with more and more books added every year. Little did they know they were creating one of the crowning jewels of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. It’s a privilege to be a small part of this decades-old endeavor.
28 November 2024
18 November 2024
20 June 2020
BUILD A LITTLE MODEL OF THE MAYFLOWER




I've copied these in the same size so all parts should fit. I would try to enlarge X2 or X3. Have fun!
17 June 2020
400 YEARS AGO THE PILGRIMS LANDED IN AMERICA - THE MAYFLOWER SOCIETY
MAYFLOWER SOCIETY and 400th ANNIVERSARY in 2020
A friend of mine got a message regarding a DNA test she'd taken a couple years ago. She hadn't checked her account in some time. A man wrote that she might be related to a passenger on the Mayflower as he is related to her and he tested that he's a descendent of one of the signers of the Mayflower Compact, Richard Warren who was married to Elizabeth Walker.
Uncanny!
Preliminary reading on the Internet: this man and woman had the largest family and there may be thousands related to them at this point. Genealogical there is some controversy and revisions.
There will be celebrations and do so hope that these can go on since we are in a plague time.
Here's the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC on CELEBRATIONS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE OCEANS
18 November 2017
PILGRIMS IN THE FAMILY TREE ?
YOU CAN ASK THE MAYFLOWER SOCIETY FOR SOME HELP, but it's up to you to prove you're related.
http://archive.boston.com/news/history/articles/2010/09/12/pilgrims_in_the_family_tree/
25 March 2010
MAYFLOWER by NATHANIEL PHILBRICK : BOOK EXCERPT
A Story of Courage, Community, and War
Viking Press
C 2006 Nathaniel Philbrick
After the Mayflower journeyed to what would be New England, other ships made the journey, including the Fortune.
124) "There were a large number of Strangers among the passengers, many of them single men who undoubtedly looked with distress at the noticeable lack of young women among the Pilgrims. With the arrival of the Fortune, there would be a total of sixty-six men in the colony and just sixteen women. For every eligible female there were six eligible men. For young girls such as fifteen year old Elizabeth Tilley, nineteen year old Pricilla Mullins, and fourteen-year-old Mary Chilton (all of them orphans). The mounting pressure to marry must have been intense, especially since the new arrivals tended to be, in Bradford's words, "lusty young men, and many of them wild enough." Adding to the potential volatility of the mix was the fact that there was no place to put them all. Bradford had no choice but to divide them up among the preexisting seven houses and four public buildings, some of which must have become virtual male dormitories..."
Guess whose ancestors arrived on this voyage? Future president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His ancestors name was Philip de la Noye, whose French surname was changed to Delano...
12 March 2010
MAYFLOWER by NATHANIEL PHILBRICK : ANCESTRY WORSHIP BOOK REVIEW
A Story of Courage, Community, and War
Viking Press
C 2006 Nathaniel Philbrick
I love this writer's work. MAYFLOWER does not disappoint. This book will probably challenge the beliefs you've had about the Pilgrims since history was being taught in grade school.
The Pilgrims had been living in Holland and were concerned that their children were becoming too Dutch, rather than remaining English, so along with fleeing religious persecution they were making a second move for ethnocultural integrity. Even as the deals were made for transportation, non-believers were involved in the early colony. While about half of those who came to the eastern coast of what would be Massachusetts died the first year, they kept coming, and in about 50 years there were dozens of small settlements founded. Relationships with the Native Americans were never easy, because the neighboring tribes were interested in taking over each other's turf. Deals became rife with third party interests. And no the Pilgrims were not Pacifists.
If you can trace your ancestry to the Pilgrims you may find yourself related by marriage to a number of famous historical figures. Why?
Because (page 104), "A few weeks after Bradford's election to governor, Edward Winslow and Susanna White showed the rest of the settlement that it was indeed possible to start anew. Susanna had lost her husband, William, on February 21; Edward had lost his wife, Elizabeth, on March 24. Just a month and a half later, on May 12, Edward and Susanna became the first couple in Plymouth to marry. Six weeks may seem too short a time to grieve, but in the seventeenth century, it was quite normal for a widow or widower to remarry within three months of his or her spouse's death. Children needed to be cared for; households needed to be maintained. And besides, these were exceptional times. If all the deaths had failed to inure them to grief, it had certainly altered them to the wondrous necessity of life."
And guess what? They were married in a civil ceremony as, Bradford, who married them, cited that nowhere in the Gospel does is say that a minister should be involved in a wedding!




