Mayflower Update

We are aboard!

I am happy to report that our application for membership to the General Society of Mayflower Descendants was accepted and my husband is now a member of the GSMD! We attended our first members meeting and my husband received his certificate last Fall.

The final piece of documentation was submitted in March of 2022 and we received notice that our application was approved in February 2023. I was very lucky to be able to find all the little pieces of documentation tying generations together. I used birth, marriage, and death certificates where available, but wills, newspaper notices, census records, and even some land records were used to make up where no vital records could be found.

This was a long process (made longer by technical difficulties and staffing changes at the state level due to illness)! I decided to start the membership process back in 2019 knowing it would be expensive and time consuming. My primary purpose in wanting membership to the GSMD was to have other experienced researchers evaluate my research. I am not a professional genealogist and so I have never had to PROVE my research to anyone other than myself. I also did not want to claim a false lineage for my husband and our children so I sought out help from the experts by applying for membership for my husband.

The application process was valuable to me as a researcher to understand the standard of proof required by professional researchers and I enjoyed the challenge of finding records that would meet the required criteria. There is something satisfying in having your work approved by others with more resources and experience. I would absolutely do it all again.

Our next step is taking a trip to Plymouth, Massachusetts and checking out the historical sites that are associated with the Mayflower and early settlers of that area. As the Mayflower families moved around New England, they settled in various other cities and towns before spreading across the whole of America. We have no shortage of places to visit in New England with family ties and we could easily spend weeks exploring cemeteries and museums!