As she prepares for Thanksgiving each year, Betsy Slagle thinks about an ancestor: Francis Cooke, who arrived in Massachusetts with fellow Pilgrims on the Mayflower in 1620.
Thirteen generations later, Slagle, of Pompano Beach, feels a connection with this pioneering forebear. She describes him as “not one of the better known” Pilgrims, but her research shows he was a Protestant separatist, a father of five and one of the signers of The Mayflower Compact, the historic agreement to create a political entity in Plymouth Colony. He has several famous descendants, including former presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and George W. Bush and actor Richard Gere.
“I reflect a lot about family history when my family gets together,” said Slagle, 74, who made pumpkin pies with her grandkids this week in preparation for Thanksgiving. “I’m probably annoying them a bit, but all of this adds up to who you are.”
Many Americans celebrate Thanksgiving without thinking much about the Pilgrims, who were marking the bountiful harvest of autumn 1621 after their arrival on Cape Cod a year earlier. According to the National Archives, at least 90 native Wampanoag joined 52 English people for the gathering in today’s Plymouth, Massachusetts.
It’s easy to research ancestry today as an assortment of websites and clubs assist amateur investigators with strategies for finding family trees and analyzing census records. But Mayflower descendants who study their forebears are an especially persistent lot who had to find the right documents to confirm their lineage with the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, the international umbrella organization that has strict rules about acceptable paperwork.
Birth, death and marriage certificates are essential primary documents, according to the society’s 2024 application procedures, but wills, town records, censuses, published books and passports are also admissible.
About 2,000 new members are confirmed each year, with a total membership of about 32,000, said Lea Filson, past governor general of the General Society, based in Plymouth.
Three Lions / Getty Images
Here are some of the signatures on The Mayflower Compact, including from William Brewster, William Bradford, Myles Standish and Edward Winslow (Three Lions/Getty Images).
The society has 17 chapters in Florida. The Broward County chapter, called the John Alden Colony, has 110 members, said Linda Anderson, who has served as its historian since 2014.
Anderson, a retired stockbroker from Boca Raton, has traced her roots to William Brewster, an elder of the Leiden congregation of separatists and their spiritual leader while aboard the Mayflower and later after the establishment of Plymouth Colony.
But Anderson, 78, found to her surprise that Brewster was not her only Mayflower ancestor. She also discovered a link to Dr. Samuel Fuller, the Plymouth Colony physician, as well as Francis Eaton, a carpenter, and John Billington, who lived in Plymouth for 10 years before he was executed for killing a man.
At Thanksgiving, Anderson said she reflects less on her ancestors’ arrival and more about the form of government they passed along to their progeny.
“Everybody thinks of the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving, but I think more about The Mayflower Compact, which was the basis of our democratic society,” Anderson said. “The U.S. Constitution was formed based on what they did.”
For descendants who live a little farther north, there’s the Palm Beach County chapter, known as the Isaac Allerton Colony, with about 90 members, said Debbie Carbia, cohistorian of the Florida Society of Mayflower Descendants.
Carbia, 64, of West Palm Beach, started researching her lineage in 2019 after her father died and left her with a family tree with limited information. She went to the Palm Beach Gardens public library and took advantage of their free access to ancestry websites, starting with the names of her grandparents and great-grandparents. After about eight months of research, the names “went all the way to the Mayflower,” she said.
Among her ancestors: John Howland, who arrived as an indentured servant; Elizabeth Tilley, who was a passenger along with her parents and married Howland three years after arriving; and Richard Warren, who helped explore Cape Cod to find areas to settle.
“It was shocking, but I was just following my line as far back as I could,” she said.
Carbia contacted the Mayflower society, which verified her research.
Despite this extraordinary confirmation, Carbia, a retired operations manager for a golf trade show, said Thanksgiving has never been a big deal in her life. She was an only child and never had large family get-togethers for the holiday. This year, she and her husband, Joe, will sit down for a meal of ham, cranberry salad, potatoes, vegetables, rolls and pumpkin pie.
It’s not unusual for amateur genealogists to start by finding a single ancestor on the Mayflower and later detect several more, Filson said. That often means members of local clubs are related to each other, a fun twist to finding longlost relatives.
If you think you may have a Mayflower ancestor, Filson says to check out themayflowersociety.org, which offers detailed instructions on how to research family trees. She encourages every American to research their family history to learn more about how they got here.
“There are 10 million Americans who descend from the Pilgrims,” Filson said. “Whether or not you find Mayflower ancestors, you will start finding family stories that will broaden your concept of who you are, and you can help build a future for your descendants.”
Originally Published: