Friday, July 5, 2019

Our Pilgrims

The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor, by William Halsall 1882


November of 2020 will mark the 400th anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower in the new world.  It's an anniversary celebrating another of those significant historical events made more personal and relevant by the realization that we had ancestors there as eyewitnesses.

Thanks to a 1856 marriage in Jackson Parish Louisiana joining the Baptist Minister William McBride and his bride the widow Ann Emelia Scarborough Hardy, I can point to specific grandparents that walked the deck of the Mayflower in 1620.  Ann Emelia's great grandmother was Nancy Doty, the great great granddaughter of  Edward Doty, a Mayflower passenger.  Nancy was also the great great great granddaughter of Samuel Fuller, another Mayflower passenger.  Samuel's parents, Edward and Ann were passengers too.  That's four people who made the voyage on the Mayflower that contributed to my DNA and that of all my family that descend from Ann Emelia McBride.

The General Society of  Mayflower Descendants publishes a multi-part volume originally titled, The Five Generations Project.  It's an aid for membership that lists the descendants of all the Mayflower passengers down five generations.  It is now called the Silver Books as the  project has expanded beyond five generations.  Because of this volume, a prospective member only needs to prove lineage to someone listed in the Silver Books.  The lineage above that person is considered already proven.  In my case, Nancy Doty was the ancestor I needed to prove lineage.  She is in the Silver Books and connects me to the four Mayflower passengers already mentioned.

9th great grandfather, Edward Doty was in his early 20's when he made the Mayflower journey.  Although he signed the Mayflower Compact in 1620, he is not considered one of the traditional "Pilgrims."  He was the servant of another passenger and remained so until becoming a freeman some years after the establishment of the Plymouth Colony.  Edward was the servant of Stephen Hopkins.  Hopkins was one of very few on the Mayflower that had made a previous journey to the new world.  That journey, fraught with excitement, saw him shipwrecked in Bermuda, a castaway for 10 months, sentenced to death as a mutineer (later commuted), a member of the Jamestown community and finally returning to England.  Why, after all that, he returned to the new world is anyone's guess.  His servant, Edward (my ancestor), developed the reputation of having been a bit of a rogue.  He appears regularly in the court records and is credited with carrying out the first recorded duel in the new world.  He and a fellow servant took to swords and daggers to settle a quarrel.  Both were bloodied  but neither died in the bout.  The Colony fathers sentenced them to be bound together by the head and feet for a day.  So heinously unbearable was the punishment that the men were separated after only an hour.

11th great grandparents Edward Fuller and wife were a little more tame and certainly more respectable in comparison to the antics of Edward Doty.  Originally from Norfolk, England, they made the journey with one young son, Samuel.  An older son was left in England to make the journey later.  Along with many other Mayflower passengers, they were living in Holland before the historic trip to the new world.  Some researchers say Mrs. Fuller's name was Ann, but there are no records to prove this.  I show her as Ann in my tree just for the sake of giving her a name.  Edward and Ann did not survive long in the new world.  They passed in the first season.  Their son, Samuel, became an orphan and was taken up by his uncle who was also named Samuel Fuller and also came on the Mayflower.  The two are frequently confused.  Uncle Samuel Fuller was a self taught physician and became the colony's doctor.

The younger Samuel Fuller is my 10th great grandfather and lived to 71. He died in Barnstable, Massachusetts.  He married Jane Lathrop, the daughter of John Lathrop, a congregationalist preacher who in 1634 left a prison cell in England for the new world on the condition that he never return.  Samuel and Jane had several children.  He outlived her and we find his will instructs that his oldest son receive Joel, an Indian slave, giving Samuel the dubious distinction of being the only Mayflower passenger to have been known to own a slave.

My descendance from these Mayflower ancestors looks like this...




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