Bay State OKs Pilgrim Plates

A bill has passed the Massachusetts Legislature that would allow Dexter Olsson of Plymouth to use license plates that read "1620."

The 1620 plates were given to Olsson’s father, George Olsson, by then-Gov. John A. Volpe in the early 1960s.

The family traces its roots to the Pilgrims’ arrival on the Mayflower in 1620 and William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth Colony. Volpe gave the "vanity," or "low-number" plates as a thank-you to the elder Olsson, who was a longtime Plymouth clerk of courts, chairman of Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc., and a co-founder of Plimoth Plantation.

The license plate number remained with the family, becoming a symbol of the Olssons’ heritage and part of family lore, Dexter Olsson said. [Link]

Standish Home Damaged by Yobs

The ancestral home of one of the Pilgrims is in dire need of a makeover.

The 17th century lodge at Duxbury Park, off Bolton Road, has been neglected for years, and yobs have smashed windows, scrawled graffiti on the walls and started fires.

The lodge, a former coach house and an ancient barn are all that remain of the ancestral home of the Standish family.

Their most famous son Myles Standish, born 1587, became the military captain of the Pilgrims and was one of the first settlers to land in America. [Link]

How the Pilgrims Lived

A Genealogue Exclusive [What's That?]

A book released this week explores the world of the Pilgrims in fascinating detail. In How the Pilgrims Lived, author Eric Fulham provides photographs and descriptions of household items that "came over on the Mayflower."

"I was worried at first that not many Mayflower relics had survived," Fulham admits. "But my research turned up thousands—from kitchen utensils to complete bedroom sets."

The section of the book devoted to Pilgrim furniture includes photos of 12 kitchen tables, 21 bureaus, and 73 rocking chairs, all of which were handed down in families claiming descent from Mayflower passengers.

"It's amazing that they were able to fit so much stuff onto that small ship," says Fulham. "No wonder it was so crowded!"

According to Fulham's research, objects that survived the 1620 crossing will appear on no less than 274 dinner tables this Thanksgiving. Myrtle Spaulding of Missouri will be using Mary Allerton's gravy boat, while the Jaques family of Florida will be seasoning their mashed potatoes with John Alden's salt shaker and Priscilla Mullins' pepper mill.

Fulham says that the items featured in the book were carefully selected from thousands presented by hopeful Pilgrim heirs.

"Sadly, some could not be included for lack of space. William Brewster's DVD collection alone would have taken up three pages."

[Photo credit: Kochen by Martina Oefelein (license)]

America's Most Famous Rock

If you've ever wondered how Plymouth Rock earned its name, here's a somewhat inaccurate account (in the interest of disclosure, Elder Thomas Faunce was my first cousin ten times removed):

In 1741, 95-year-old Thomas Faunce was carried to the waterfront where a pier was about to be built over an undistinguished rock. With great emotion he said his father, who had arrived in Plymouth in 1623, had told him that it was where the Pilgrims first landed. Maybe so.

The rock itself has had a tortuous life. In 1774, it was decided to dig it up. While being loaded into a wagon, it broke in half. Half of it was taken to the town square. In 1834, what remained had been significantly downsized by hammer-wielding souvenir hunters. While moving it to a safer location at the newly built Pilgrim Hall it fell off the vehicle and broke again. It was finally pieced together with cement and mounted in front of the hall. [Link]

John Faunce, the father, didn't come on the Mayflower (which arrived, so the Rock says, in 1620), but on the Anne in 1623. Faunce's statement was witnessed by Deacon Ephraim Spooner when he was just a boy, and it is upon Spooner's testimony decades later that the Rock was fetishized. Pilgrim Hall Museum has a more complete history of the revered stone on its website.

By the way, Caleb Johnson has written an excellent review of this weekend's History Channel presentation, "Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower."

[Photo credit: Plymouth Rock by John Hartnup (license)]

The Untold Story of the Mayflower

Dr. Francis Bremer, chair of the history department at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, wants to set the record straight about Pilgrims: they liked booze and sex.

Bremer says the colonists brought with them from Europe a preference for alcoholic beverages, which were considered an important part of their diet. Drinking was pervasive because water supplies were usually contaminated by human and animal waste. Tea, coffee, and soft drinks were unknown in England when the colonists left. Therefore, alcoholic beverages were the common fare, though they regarded drunkenness as a sin.

Another common myth about both the Pilgrims and Puritans is that they were against sex. "Actually the Puritans had a much more matter-of-fact attitude about sex," said Bremer. "As long as we are talking about sex between a married couple, the Puritans had no problem with that. They believed that God intended man and woman to derive pleasure from sex." [Link]

Bremer will be featured on the three-hour documentary Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower," set to air Nov. 19 on the History Channel. You can see clips by completing a quiz here, or skip the quiz and watch some bloopers at YouTube.

American History 101

I do like this profile of fellow Mainer Zimri Bridges, but one paragraph stopped me in my tracks.

According to an exhaustive family history charted by Zim’s niece, Rosalie Doughty, the Bridgeses came to "the Colonies" even before the Mayflower. Ancestor Edmund Bridges was born in England in 1612 and came across the ocean aboard the James in 1635, seven full years before those nouveau riche Pilgrims landed in Plymouth in 1642.

I don't have time to drive down to Plymouth to confirm this, but I'm almost positive they have a rock down there with the year "1620" chiseled into it. Now, I sincerely doubt that they'd have gone to the trouble of chiseling that date on a rock without first checking a book. Or at least Wikipedia.

Don't Look For the Truth in Church

Most family historians would be thrilled to have an ancestor figure prominently in a bestseller like Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. But not Judith Church Tydings, whose letter to the editor of the Washington Post appears in today's paper.

As a descendant of militia captain Benjamin Church, one of the two main historical figures in the book, I wish to stress the unreliability of my ancestor's account of King Philip's War, upon which Mr. Philbrick relied heavily. [Link]

Tydings points to Harvard historian Jill Lepore's critical review of the book in the New Yorker of April 24th, in which Lepore faults Philbrick for giving too much credence to Church's memories of the war, written down by his doting son forty years later. "This as-told-to, after-the-fact memoir is the single most unreliable account of one of the most well-documented wars of the Colonial period," she says, and it casts the elder Church in a light usually reserved for comic-book heroes.

“Entertaining Passages” paints Church not only as the hero of every battle he fought but as the Puritans’ voice of reason and restraint, as the man of conscience who attempts, in vain, to halt every atrocity: when his Mohegan allies want to torment a captured Nipmuck with fire and knives, Church “interceded and prevailed for his escaping torture”; in the Great Swamp Fight, Church, badly injured, valiantly hobbles to his commanding officer and begs him to stop the attack, only to be rebuffed. [Link]

I should note that, at the time of these events, my own ancestor, Samuel Dunham, was at home working on the drinking habit that in 1681 would get him excommunicated from the First Church of Plymouth. I have not read Philbrick's book, but assume that Samuel's name is not in the index.

Recognition Petition Comes to Fruition

The Pilgrims had no trouble recognizing their Indian neighbors, but the U.S. government drew a blank until this afternoon. The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe has received preliminary approval of their request for federal recognition, with final approval expected within a year.

"History in one respect now comes full circle," tribal chief Vernon Lopez said in a statement. "Our ancestors, as a sovereign nation, met the Mayflower, and that meeting led to the birth of this great nation. Today, our government has reaffirmed this status and the faith of that first meeting." [Link]

And yes, the Wampanoag have expressed interest in starting up a gambling operation. Perhaps a floating casino aboard the Mayflower II?

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

What Happens in Plymouth Colony, Stays in Plymouth Colony

Alan Abel tongue-in-cheekily reports in today's Fairfield County (Conn.) Weekly on a planned "Pilgrims' Casino" to be built by two descendants of Miles Standish. It'll stand 50 stories high, with a Ferris wheel and elevators on the outside that "look like hot air balloons." Best of all, a "circular high-speed monorail, with a train shaped like the Mayflower, will speed patrons to the hotel lobby."

"We have rights here," declared Izzy Standish, who, with his brother Jake, is preparing for the casino opening. "We've paid the Indians back; people from Connecticut and surrounding states made Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun a success. Now it's time for the Pilgrims to score." [Link]

[tagged: genealogy, family tree, ancestry]

No Pilgrims on the Mayflower

From WCCO-TV (of Minneapolis, Minn.), posted Nov. 24, 2005:

Family Name Conjures John Wayne, Gentle Ribbing

Bill Hudson
Reporting

(WCCO) Many associate the Thanksgiving holiday with the Puritans who landed at Plymouth Rock.

But the Pilgrims were more than religious wanderers. For some it was their family name.

[snip]

"There are no problems, but a lot of questions about the name as far as, 'Did your ancestors come over on the Mayflower?'" [Leslie] Pilgrim said. "I wish I could say yes, but they didn't."

[snip]

While many credit the English for the "Pilgrim" name, it's actually a derivative of a French word for a voyageur or wanderer.

[Read the whole story]

Mayflower Myths and Missteps

Dick Eastman's article on Mayflower Ancestors is good, but neglects to mention the passengers supposed to have arrived on the Mayflower who did not.

My own ancestor Deacon John Dunham was a member of the Separatist community in Holland, but had the good sense to take a later boat. That didn't stop Isaac Watson Dunham from finding a place for him on the Mayflower. He wrote in his 1907 Dunham Genealogy that "It has been found to be a very difficult task to establish this John Dunham, of Scrooby, and reëstablish him, as the Plymouth John Dunham, who, as a Separatist, fled from England, escaped from his pursuers by assuming the name of John Goodman when in Holland and America."

A "very difficult task" because it is completely untrue. John Dunham was living happily with his wife and children in Leyden while the Pilgrim John Goodman was living out his short and miserable life in Plymouth.

Or consider George Carr, who, we are told, "married Lucinda Davenport and came to America in 1620, on the Mayflower, as a ship carpenter, bringing his young wife with him."

He located with the Pilgrims at Plymouth, and his wife was one of the unfortunate forty-one who died the following winter and early spring. [Edson I. Carr, The Carr Family Records (Rockton, Ill.: Herald Print. House, 1894), p. 12]

To support this theory, the book presents one of the most obvious forgeries ever printed: the purported diary of George Carr's sister-in-law:

Husband says he had a brother George Carr, who went to America in 1620.

[snip]

Next morning the boats were lowered and we landed, but what was my surprise! Lucinda, George Carr's wife, had died early in the spring before. My husband and George his brother and myself went to view her resting place. [ibid., p. 10]

See Caleb Johnson's old website for some other Mayflower hoaxes, fakes, and forgeries.

Genealogue Exclusive: Grim Evidence Found in Plymouth

A Genealogue Exclusive [What's That?]

Recent archaeological excavations on Cole's Hill in Plymouth, Mass., have turned up the bones of several Pilgrims, and have raised unsettling questions about how the early settlement there survived.

Team leader Stephen Holman of Taunton University was the first to inspect the bones.

"The first skeleton we found—we call him 'Edward Tilley' in the lab—was mostly complete but disarticulated, and the ribs and long bones bore unusual markings. It looked like something, or someone, had gnawed on them. The joints showed signs of deliberate butchering, perhaps with a hatchet."

Subsequent exhumations confirmed Holman's suspicions.

These findings call into question the accepted history of the Pilgrim's first winter of 1620-21, including accounts written by the Pilgrims themselves. In none of these works is there any mention of cannibalism—a fact which does not surprise anthropologist Mary Donner, also of Taunton University.

"Cannibalism is not something the Pilgrims would have been proud of, and it's not something the company's investors would have been thrilled to hear about. It's entirely likely that the colonists swore an oath never to speak of it. Call it the second Mayflower Compact."

Officers of the Society of Mayflower Descendants could not be reached for comment, but one long-time member wondered how this news would affect her membership.

"If my ancestor ate another Pilgrim," asked Dolores Bisbee of Wareham, "can I claim descent from both?"

Hefner: I Read The Mayflower Quarterly, But Only for the Articles

From The Miami (Fla.) Herald of Oct. 4, 2005:

Hugh Hefner: real American patriot

Playboy empire king Hugh Hefner says he had to reinvent himself over the years in order to leave behind his Puritan roots.

Hefner told Time magazine he is a direct descendant of William Bradford, a Puritan who came over on the Mayflower.

"There was a great deal of repression in their lives and the way they were raised and, in turn, the way I was raised," he said.

The most obvious difference, of course, being that Bradford and company went on to found a nation based on the separation of church and state, while Hef founded a magazine intent on separating women from their clothes.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

As Dick Eastman has pointed out, William Bradford was more of a Separatist than a Puritan. Nevertheless, Hef would not have been a happy member of the Plymouth Colony, where in 1621 Robert Cushman delivered a sermon entitled The Sin and Danger of Self-Love.

This Day in Pilgrim History: August 5, 1620

The ships Mayflower and Speedwell finally set sail from Southampton, England, this day in 1620, but not without controversy.

Several of the Pilgrim families had brought aboard all their furniture, books, dishes, and silverware—so much, in fact, that one of every two homes now standing in New England is equipped with some item that "came over in the Mayflower."

Also troublesome were the families who had hidden themselves onboard, hoping to "cash in" on the Pilgrims' glory. Among them were George and Lucinda Carr, whose presence on the Mayflower was unrecognized until genealogists fabricated evidence to prove it. The author's own ancestor, John Dunham, has been identified with Mayflower passenger "John Goodman"—an identification far more convincing if Dunham had not outlived Goodman by 45 years.

For details far more convincing than these, visit MayflowerHistory.com.

This Day in Pilgrim History: July 22, 1620

On this date, 385 years ago, the Pilgrims—also known as Separatists, Saints, and Marauders of the Native Wilderness—departed Holland aboard the Speedwell, a vessel renowned for its unseaworthiness.

The Pilgrims had intended to sail to America aboard two ships, but decided that their 17th-century devotion to inconvenience and squalor demanded they all travel together.

But which ship to choose? Bradford and Brewster scratched their hat-buckles and awaited revelation, until young Mary Chilton reminded her elders of the riddle, "If April showers bring mayflowers, what do mayflowers bring?" Whereupon they knew the answer, and the Speedwell was promptly scuttled.

In related news, on this date in 1927, Speedwell Movers was founded in Indianapolis, Indiana. After several of their trucks broke down and failed to reach their destinations, the company renamed itself Mayflower Transit, and went on to great success.

For more accurate details, see MayflowerHistory.com.