DNA Helps Illuminate Mayflower Misery

Posted By Les Conklin on Mar 15, 2018

March 15, 2018

By Les Conklin

Mayflower Anchored in Provincetown Harbor Nov. 1621.

Mayflower Anchored in Provincetown Harbor Nov. 1620.

When I was in grammar school, we had fun cutting-out paper Pilgrim hats and colorful wild turkeys to decorate our classroom windows. And then, there was the anticipation of Thanksgiving Day dinner with family happiness reinforced with turkey, stuffing and all the fixings. Unfortunately, these pleasant memories in no way resemble the bleak, sometimes terrible,reality faced by our Mayflower forebears. The trials and travails of the Mayflower passengers became more meaningful when I finally began to review my 270 Ancestry DNA “matches.

Six months earlier, I had purchased one of the low-cost DNA kits that are advertised on television to help individuals discover their ancestral roots. Since my test results had been produced, the matches had been accumulating, waiting for my review. For each match, I quickly reviewed the records for the corresponding people in the online family tree that I have created over the years. A few of those matches led to additional research and astounding discoveries.

Do you believe this?

When the Mayflower arrived off New England, my siblings and I had more than 20 great grandparents aboard.

I didn’t think you’d believe it.

Here is the list of my family’s great grandparents that were on the Mayflower. The list includes Miles Standish, John and Pricilla Alden, William Bradford and John Billington. Who is John Billington? He was the first Englishman to be hanged for murder in America.

Isaac Allerton
Mary Allerton
Mary Allerton
John Billington
Eleanore Billington
Francis Billington *
William Bradford *
William Brewster *
Mary Wentworth Brewster
James Chilton *
Mrs. James Chilton *
Mary Chilton *
Francis Cooke *
Francis Eaton
Sarah Easton
Samuel Eaton
Samuel Fuller *
William Mullins
Alice Mullins
Pricilla Mullins *
Thomas Rogers
Miles Standish *

Note. An “*” following a passenger’s name means that I have received a DNA match for that person.

Six Reasons Why

I can understand why you might doubt that my brother, sister and I have so many Mayflower passengers as great grandparents. Frankly, I was incredulous as I continued to dig them up, so to speak. None-the-less, here are six factors that help to explain these hard-to-believe findings.

#1. Everyone has many great grandparents.

Consider the following:

You = 1 Individual
Parents = 2 Individuals
Grand Parents = 4 Individuals
1st Generation of Great Grandparents (1 GGP) = 8 Individuals
2 GGP = 16 Individuals
3 GGP = 32 “
4 GGP =64 “
5 GGP = 128 “
6 GGP = 256 “
7 GGP = 512 “
8 GGP = 1024 “
9 GGP = 2048 “
10 GGP = 4096 “

I’m writing this in March 2018. The Mayflower anchored off Plymouth-to-be in late 1620, almost 400 years ago. Most of the Mayflower passengers listed above belonged to the 9th or 10th generation of my grandparents, i.e. 9 GGP or 10 GGP. Back then, most of my family’s great grandparents did not live in North America; the overwhelming majority lived in Europe.

#2. A family tree is more like a family bush.

I don’t like to let the air out of the Conklin family pride balloon, but according to FamilyHIstoryDaily.com there are more than 35 million living descendants of the Mayflower passengers.

Imagine the letter “V.” A REALLY BIG “V.” At the bottom of the “V” are the 130 passengers and crew of the Mayflower, only 51 of which were possible Mayflower ancestors. Before they could reproduce, the rest returned to England on the Mayflower or died.

Four hundred years ago, the Mayflower passengers who remained in the Plymouth Colony represented a large share of the immigrant population of America. The world’s population has increased dramatically since 1620. At the top of the “V” imagine today’s population. As you work backward in time towards the base of the “V” tracing your family’s ancestry, the number of individuals decreases and the branches of the tree collapse toward the center, like a bush.

#3. Small, Isolated, Stressed Group

Pilgrims Exploring Settlement Site, Dec. 1620.

When Mayflower finally sailed for America there were 102 passengers. Most of the passengers were travelling with all or part of their families. In some cases, only the father and an older child came and the mother and younger children remained in Europe, waiting until the colony was established and/or their children got older.

During the stormy, prolonged Atlantic crossing, several passengers and crew members died, many were sick and nearly all suffered. It was December before they chose Plymouth as the location of their settlement. They were in a strange land inhabited by people they feared. They had few resources and a small quantity of food remaining. It was winter in New England and they had to build shelters and then houses

.About 50 percent of the arriving passengers were dead by the end of the winter of 1620-21. Only four women survived the first winter.

#4. Reproductive Reinforcements Arrive

The Fortune arrived in late summer 1621.

In Plymouth, the Pilgrims had to share the limited resources they had. It was not until the late summer of 1621 when the ship Fortune arrived and 1623, with the arrival of the ships Anne and Little James, that more family members and single men and women joined the Mayflower survivors.

Those that lost wives or husbands quickly remarried and continued to produce children. For those who were single, dating prospects were limited. What you could see was what you could get, if you were lucky. No online dating services or neighboring communities.

The result was that offspring, including some of our family’s ancestors, were produced from within the Pilgrim group. For example, Miles Standish arrived on the Mayflower with his first wife, who died during the first winter. Standish married Barbara Mullins, a passenger on the Fortune, which arrived in 1621. Mary Chilton’s mother, father, and brother were all dead by the end of the first winter, leaving Mary as an orphan. She married John Winslow who arrived in the Fortune. It wasn’t long before Ms. Chilton joined the ranks of our Mayflower great grandparents.

#5. Odds Improve as Branches Increase

Returning to the REALLY BIG V analogy, the longer a family has been in America the more branches it is likely to have and thus the better the odds of making a connection to a Mayflower passenger. Once you find a connection to a Mayflower passenger, it’s likely you will find others. Both of my grandmothers have family branches that eventually connect to different, and in a two cases, to the same Mayflower passengers.

#6. Adoptions, Mistakes and Family “Secrets”

My parents’ children might have more than 20 Mayflower great grandparents because genealogy is not an exact science. The Pilgrims did not have time to record events, births, deaths, etc. as they happened. In his later years, Bradford did write a book that included a list of the Mayflower passengers, but some of this information has been disputed. Much of the available information was “recollected,” written in family Bibles, etc. It is interesting that the idea of a Thanksgiving gathering was based on an account written late in life by John Winslow (8 GGF), who arrived at Plymouth in 1621.

People interested in family history have been researching the Mayflower and its passengers for centuries and much of this information is now in family trees and other records that are available online. Having the information online does not guarantee its accuracy. In fact, using a computer you can make a mistake faster and pass it along faster. None-the-less, collective research, which online access has improved the overall quality of information.

And of course, there is the possibility that ancestors who carry a family surname do not carry the genes of the father and/or the mother because of adoption or an undisclosed coupling – you know what I mean. These incidents, which are not rare, can introduce a “mistake” into a family tree that gets passed on for generations.

It’s getting easier to learn your family’s history.

And, I think it will not be too long before it gets even easier.

When I think of genealogy, I think of elderly people sitting in a library taking notes out of yellowed books, staring at roll after roll of microfiche, or waiting for months to get a response regarding an ancestor’s military record. In the 30-plus years, I’ve been learning and writing about my family’s history, I’ve done all those things. The good news is that today those time-consuming activities are rarely needed. Today, you can accomplish in minutes research that used to take months.

Easy Access to Online Records

Most of the records you need to research you family’s history are online; you can do research anyplace, anytime. Better yet, the family trees developed by others are also online and, you can easily incorporate their information about a person into your tree. You can also join online groups and share information with other members.

Inexpensive, Widely-Used DNA Kits

The recent introduction of inexpensive DNA test kits that support the study of family history is a breakthrough innovation. The kits make it easy to get started. Spit into a plastic tube and put the tube in the mail and you can get information including graphic maps showing where your ancestors lived and migrated from/to. You also have the option of contacting people whose DNA matches yours, e.g. a possible 2nd cousin in Pittsburgh that you didn’t know existed.

If you are interested in creating a family tree online or have already have done that, the benefits of a DNA kit are even greater. In brief spurts over the decades, I have put together a tree with 5,700 people documented, representing the various lines of the family. A DNA kit is helping me verify the accuracy of my tree and providing clues to other lines of research.

Time Well Spent

I began one of those periodic family history spurts, when Ancestry sent me a match for someone related to a Mayflower passengers. It meant that another kit user’s DNA matched mine AND we also had matching entries in our trees that referenced the same person, say Miles Standish. That DNA match increased my confidence that my family tree was correct and I investigated further. So far, there have been DNA matches on about 60% of my Mayflower great grandparents. The matches continue to come in as more people, with family trees online, take the DNA test.

Collectively, DNA matches provide an independent cross check on family trees and the records that underlie them. They also provide solid leads to follow. This is new technology, so who knows what’s going to be possible in the future? It might be possible to automatically create most of a family tree based on a DNA test, some basic personal information, and standardized databases. My family’s Pilgrim great grandparents, with the exception of John Billington, would be impressed.

PS. The original version of this piece was written for my family, many of whom have access to our online family tree. I know quite a few Peak readers who are interested in genealogy and American history and that the interest in those subjects is growing, hence I’m making the article available here. If you have a question, don’t hesitate to contact me at lesconklin@gppaaz.org.

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