Resources for the Mayflower Passengers and Their Descendants

 

2020 is the 400th Anniversary of the landing of the passengers of the Mayflower. Here is a very short summary of the voyage from Wikipedia: Mayflower.

Mayflower was an English ship that transported the first English Puritans, known today as the Pilgrims, from England to the New World in 1620. After a grueling 10 weeks at sea, the Mayflower, with 102 passengers and a crew of about 30, reached America, dropping anchor near the tip of Cape Cod on November 11, 1620.

Mayflower Passenger List

It is estimated that as many as 35 million people living today have ancestors from the above list. Digital copies of some of the original documents about the Mayflower passengers are available online from the State Library of Massachusetts. See https://archives.lib.state.ma.us/handle/2452/208249 

The main genealogical source for researching a connection to one or more of the Mayflower passengers is a series of books called the "Silver Books" from the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. The name of the books comes from their silver colored covers. Here is the real name of the Silver Books is the Mayflower Families Through Five Generations. The entire series is being digitized and indexed through a partnership between the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) and the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. See https://www.americanancestors.org/silverbooks. Here is a quote from that link describing the vast database. 

NEHGS will post images from the “Silver Books” for all fifth-generation descendants with a complete index including: birth, marriage, death, and deeds for these descendants, their spouses, and children on AmericanAncestors.org. NEHGS will also create indexes on content within the first fifty years of issues of the Mayflower Quarterly (1935 through 1984) for all article titles and names included in that publication and post images on AmericanAncestors.org.

This database will involve 31 volumes of the “Silver Books” comprising about 11,800 relevant pages. Our preliminary calculations indicate that the index will have about 7,750 fifth generation descendants, along with their spouses and children. The actual record count will not be known until the indexing is completed, but more than 150,000 birth, marriage, death, and deed records in total are estimated.

Before you even dream of being a descendant of one of the Mayflower passengers, I would suggest that you become very familiar with the basic resources about the passengers and their descendants. The basic NEHGS resources are on their website AmericanAncestors.org. Before you waste your time looking elsewhere, I would suggest obtaining a subscription to that website. Some of the basic databases on the website that are invaluable for research in addition to the Silver Books include the following:

• The Mayflower Descendant: A Journal of Pilgrim Genealogy & History
• The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620—1633 series
• Plymouth Church Records 1620-1859
• Barnstable, MA Probate Records 1685-1789

I might also caution you that many of the online family trees, including the FamilySearch.org Family Tree are woefully inaccurate when it comes to documenting the Mayflower passengers and their descendants. Before you even begin to rely on the entries in online family trees, you need to be very familiar with the Silver Books and the other readily available online resources. Recently, FamilySearch made all the passengers "read-only" and this has stopped the stream of unsupported changes to these individuals for a while but not all the information on every passenger is correct despite the read-only status. 

Here are a few more websites that you should be very familiar with before you jump to the conclusion that you had an ancestor on the Mayflower. 

• MayflowerHistory.com
• Mayflower400uk.org
• https://mayflower.americanancestors.org/
• https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/mayflower-passenger-list/
• https://www.plimoth.org/
• https://pilgrimhall.org/list_passengers.htm
• https://immigrantships.net/newcompass/ships/ship_files/mayflower.html
• https://www.massmayflower.org/index.php/research-resources-education/mayflower-passengers
• http://www.histarch.illinois.edu/plymouth/index2.html
• https://sail1620.org/
• https://www.flickr.com/photos/midgefrazel/sets/72157602331744892

There are a lot more. I will be writing over the next few months again and again about the Mayflower passengers. So stay tuned. 

Legacy Family Tree Webinars Celebrates 10th Anniversary

 

https://familytreewebinars.com/intermediate_page.php?diply_nm=top10

As I remember, I was in attendance at either the first broadcast webinar or one very close to the first. I do remember a discussion with Geoff Rasmussen about the "new" technology. That now seems like a really long time ago especially since being online with webinars is now an integral part of my ongoing life. I have no exact idea how many I have done but it is probably somewhere over 200 best guess. Some of them have not been recorded but most of them are on the Brigham Young University Family History Library YouTube Channel. I have also done a couple for Legacy Family Tree and also a few for MyHeritage. 

In celebration of the Anniversary, Legacy Family Tree is unlocking the top webinar from each year and making them free for 10 days. Visit www.FamilyTreeWebinars.com/top10 to watch.

There will also be discounts for new webinar memberships. 

What do you need to know to do genealogical research?

 

I found this interesting quote from the following book:

Fudge, George H, and Frank Smith. LDS Genealogist’s Handbook: Modern Procedures and Systems,. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1972, Page 121. 

Intelligent research cannot be conducted without some knowledge of the economic, social, religious, and historical background of the country whose records are being searched. For instance, events in these categories affect the movement of people and the direction of that movement. The keeping of records was affected by wars and by the formation of new religious sects.

There have been promotions by genealogical companies in the past few years that have maintained that you don't have to be a genealogist to do family history. Well, one problem with this statement is that by definition, if you are involved in family history, you are a genealogist. The definition of a genealogist is so vague as to include all possible levels of involvement in family history. Here is the most common definition found on the internet in a number of websites:

A genealogist is "a person who traces or studies the descent of persons or families."

Perhaps we can find another more restrictive definition that will support the idea that doing family history does not involve genealogy? Here is a common definition of "genealogy" from the Britannica.com website:

Genealogy, the study of family origins and history. Genealogists compile lists of ancestors, which they arrange in pedigree charts or other written forms. The word genealogy comes from two Greek words—one meaning “race” or “family” and the other “theory” or “science.” Thus is derived “to trace ancestry,” the science of studying family history. The term pedigree comes from the Latin pes (“foot”) and grus (“crane”) and is derived from a sign resembling a crane’s foot, used to indicate lines of descent in early west European genealogies. 

As I have written in the past, the term "family history" was coined to avoid using the word "genealogy" to avoid all those people out there who are allergic to genealogy. 

I certainly agree with the first quote above about the need to know a lot about everything to do an adequate job of genealogical research. I frequently find that I have to do research about my research to understand what my research has found. Just today, I tried to answer what I thought was a simple question and ended up spending a great deal of time researching online and never did get the original question answered. 

I guess the real message that genealogists need to convey is that genealogy is a really hard, complex pursuit, and doing genealogical research is not easy. One of the possible reasons why genealogy is not a generally accepted academic subject is that is so broad and so difficult only a handful of people can possibly master it and even then there are very few paying jobs available for "professionals." 

The best answer to the question in the title of this post is that you need to know how to do research; real difficult research in libraries, archives, online, and sometimes standing in a cemetery. 

How do genealogically significant records get preserved? Part One

 

Let's suppose that your great-grandfather wrote a journal during his lifetime and you are the member of the family that ends up with the journal. You might have a couple of concerns: how do you preserve the document and what can you do to make the journal available to others in your family? Obviously, this hypothetical example applies to more than just an individual with an ancestor's journal, it also applies to a library or archive with original historical records. The process whereby a historical document or record is made available online is somewhat complicated. Here is a list of the steps necessary to transform a paper-based document into an online digital copy. 

• Physical preservation
• Curation
• Housing or storage
• Cataloging
• Indexing
• Publication
• Maintenance

Even if you are an individual with only one genealogically significant document or record as contrasted to a huge archive or repository, everyone has to go through the same steps. I will examine these steps one-by-one and perhaps you will begin to understand what it takes to assure that valuable information will not be lost.

Preservation

Inevitably, unless steps are taken to preserve a physical object, the object will eventually be lost. This process is inevitable. In physics, this process of decay and disorder is called entropy. How you preserve a historical artifact depends on the artifact's composition. I am going to use the term "artifact" to represent any genealogically (historically) significant object including documents and records. Simply put, if you want to preserve a book the process is different from that necessary to preserve a quilt. In addition, preserving an artifact really only changes the method of preservation. For example, let's suppose that we want to preserve the journal I mentioned above. Today, the obvious response would be to digitize the journal. But then, all you have really done is change the challenge of preserving a paper document into the equally difficult challenge of preserving a digital document. In short, the process does not end with the physical preservation of the artifact. The preservation includes all of the steps I outlined above.

To address the first step, you might want to refer to the Library of Congress's Preservation Directorate. This website contains specific instructions about the physical preservation of the following types of artifacts and links to how to preserve many others:

• Books
• Paper
• Photographs
• Scrapbooks and Albums
• Newspapers
• Comic Books
• Audio-Visual: Grooved Media, Magnetic Tape, and Optical Discs
• Audio-Visual: Motion Picture Film
• Asian Bindings
• Other objects: Video on making a custom storage box for objects
• Preservation Housing for Large Fragile Objects [PPTX, 12 MB]

The information on this website is constantly being updated. Preservation is not just putting the item in a cardboard box and forgetting about it. You need to be aware of the need to do something more. One thing you can do with a journal is to donate it to a historical society, museum, or archive. 

Digital images of the artifact are one way of preserving the information it contains. However, without continuing down the steps in the list above, digitization does nothing more than create another artifact that needs to go through the entire process. 

Curation

Curation is the action or process of selecting, organizing, and looking after the items in a collection or exhibition. Once you have done what is necessary to preserve an artifact, you need to take the next steps. But even assuming that you organize and look after the items, this does not mean that the artifact will ultimately be preserved. Everyone dies. Preservation will be passed on to your heirs or assigns. That brings up the next item on the list. 

Housing or storage

Your basement, attic, or garage are only temporary storage areas. Curation of the artifact needs to move on to a permanent storage place. Permanent in this context means institutional. Finding an institution, archive, library, historical society, or other organization that will take over curation can be the most difficult challenge. Even though you or your family might put a huge emotional value on the artifact does not mean that an institution is going to spend its hard-earned funds to preserve it. You need to be realistic and view your artifact in its historical context. All I can suggest is that you start contacting every institution, library, archive, historical society, or any other similar organization ask. 

Cataloging

A collection can be organized but not cataloged. Archives and other organizations that help preserve artifacts must catalog their collections so they know what they have and how they can locate any given artifact in their overall collections. Digitizing the artifact does not solve the problem. Digitizing just changes the format of the preservation efforts and makes storage less expensive. Don't think that once an artifact (such as the journal above) is digitized that the original can be thrown away. The artifact itself is genealogically significant and must be preserved if at all possible. This is the main reason why finding an institution to take over this part of the preservation process is vital.

Indexing

A catalog is helpful in locating a specific artifact but does not tell you much about the significance of the item. This is especially true with documents and records. Indexes open up the possibility that the item will be useful for research by people who do not understand catalogs and how to search documents and records page by page. If you keep an important artifact in your family, it is very likely that it will not be available generally to the genealogical research community. If the artifact moves to an institution dedicated to preservation, and the item is digitized, cataloged, and indexed, it is then possible that the general community may find a way to gain access to the artifact. 

Publication

Even if you or an institution takes all the steps to this point in the preservation process and fails to make the digital record. Some genealogists get to this step after having done all the work to preserve their genealogically significant artifact (records) and fail to make them publically available. They have just moved back up the list. 

Maintenance

Even with digital copies of artifacts, you still have to maintain digital copies. This is part one of a series and will continue as I do some research. Stay tuned. 

A Deeper Look at Ancestry.com

 

Ancestry.com began as a family history product sold on CDs in 1997 and has expanded online to include 3 million paying subscribers and 18+ million people DNA tested. The website claims the world's largest collection of family history records with over 27 billion records online. 

The Ancestry.com website is uniquely valuable to research genealogists who happen to be doing research in the countries where the website has records. Superficially, anyone who was interested in their family history and who had ancestors and relatives in the countries where Ancestry.com has records will likely connect with either ancestors or relatives by creating a family tree on the website supplemented by an Ancestry DNA test. For many people in the United States and Western Europe, green leaf record hints and DNA matches will help to relatively quickly build a family tree back a number of generations. However, despite its beginning family historian orientation, the website is also extremely useful for advanced researchers. 

I would like to present two examples of how this process might work to help you resolve mysteries and extend your family tree using the tools provided by the Ancestry.com website. 

My first example involves solving the identity of one of my Great-grandfathers who was known as Marinus Christensen. He was born in Torslev, Hjorring, Denmark in 1863. A notation in a book authored by the wife of one of his nephews indicated that he was "adopted." Extensive research turned up another notation of adoption in a church record. However, his real status was a mystery. Off and on during my almost 40 years of research, I would check to see if there were any records that might reveal his identity. Finally, one of my daughters found a baby born out-of-wedlock very close to where Marinus lived and also named "Marinus." We guessed that this might be the long-sought record showing his actual parents and birth date.  

Fairly recently, Ancentry.com introduced a new DNA program called ThruLines™. Marinus Christensen showed up with 13 of my DNA matches. Interestingly, all of these matches were Christensen and therefore his descendants. Upon noticing this fact, I checked to see if his sister had any descendant DNA matches. I found that the ThruLines™program has found 43 matches for Marinus's sister, Mary Kjerstine Christensen Overson. Interestingly, her descendants who are my DNA matches show a completely different set of matches that are all Oversons and none of them overlap as Christensens. So Marinus was not related to his "sister" and was almost certainly adopted. Obviously, the two families had different surnames because of Mary Kjersine's marriage, but they always considered themselves to be "cousins." Well, they still are cousins but not just related by DNA. This example shows how research, a family tree on Ancestry.com, and a DNA test can be used by the ThruLines™program to help resolve a family mystery.

My second example is a lot more complicated. It involves a more distant ancestor, Thomas Brownell, b. 1615, d. 1665. When I began this example, he had 39 Ancestry Hints. As I examined the hints, I found some very interesting documents. I also found a few things I would absolutely ignore. As is the case with a lot of people I have in my family tree, the information is incomplete and sometimes inaccurate. The reason for this is that in my initial survey which I started almost 40 years ago, I entered the information as I found it at that time, long before computers and the internet. Since I have been working back systematically, at the level of Thomas Brownell, my 9th great-grandfather, where I have over 2000 potential grandparents, I am only just now even looking at some of these people. 

What I quickly determined was that the information I had in my Ancestry.com family tree was woefully out of date. This is an important point. Whichever of the many genealogy programs you use for your main program, you have to realize that when using other family tree programs or websites, you need to make sure that they have the same information you have maintained in your primary family tree. So before I got going any further with the 39 record hints, I spent a few minutes bringing this particular person up to date. After the update, I have Thomas Brownell, b. 1608, d. 1664. Quite a change. Now to go through all the record hints and see if they make sense or change any of the updated information. With 39 record hints, this takes some time but is still valuable. 

It turns out that one of my distant relatives did a huge amount of research about this particular family which saves me a lot of time. I can now save the record hints to my ancestor and may be able to work further back in time. But this one entry did not save me the time of updating my files about this person. Because of the many people using Ancestry, occasionally I receive a benefit from all the work that others have done. Look deeper and maybe you will also benefit from the work of your relatives. 

Using the Internet Like a Pro: Genealogists Have No Idea What’s Out There

 

Using the Internet Like a Pro: Genealogists Have No Idea What’s Out There

One of my most recent videos raised a question. The video reviews a number of hugely valuable websites for genealogists that do not all fall into the category of genealogy websites. The question involved obtaining a list of the websites on the video that did not involve stopping the video every few minutes to write down a URL or name. Because I was asked the question, I decided to make a list of the websites mentioned in the video and add a few more for good measure. Here is the list. You may still want to view the website so you can see why I use all these additional resources. 

•WorldCat.org https://www.worldcat.org/

• Archive.org https://archive.org/

• Reclaim the Records https://www.reclaimtherecords

• Digital Public Library of America https://dp.la/

• Hathi Trust Digital Library https://www.hathitrust.org/

• Google Books https://books.google.com/

• Trove https://trove.nla.gov.au/

• Europeana.eu https://www.europeana.eu/en

• Foundation for East European Family History Studies https://feefhs.org/

• The USGenWeb Project http://usgenweb.org/

• GenWiki (German Genealogy) https://www.compgen.de/

• Cyndi’s List https://cyndislist.com/

• RootsWeb https://rootsweb.com/

• Library of Congress, Chronicling America https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

• New York Public Library Online Collections https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/

• Smithsonian Libraries Digital Library https://library.si.edu/digital-library

• Open Education Database, 250+ Killer Digital Libraries and Archives https://oedb.org/ilibrarian/250-plus-killer-digital-libraries-and-archives/

• The Family History Guide https://thefhguide.com/

• FindAGrave.com https://www.findagrave.com/

• Billion Graves http://www.billiongraves.com/

• Interment.net http://www.interment.net/

• Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island http://www.libertyellisfoundation.org/

• Digital Library on American Slavery http://library.uncg.edu/slavery/

• Old Maps Online https://www.oldmapsonline.org/

• Board on Geographic Names https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-systems/ngp/board-on-geographic-names

• The Freedmen’s Bureau Records https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/initiatives/freedmens-bureau-records

• FreeBMD https://www.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/search.pl

• Castle Garden http://www.castlegarden.org/searcher.php

• Open Library https://openlibrary.org/

Look for Genealogy Channels on YouTube

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSdEueFFI669fDBwILOCDvw

Google's YouTube.com is a goto place for information and explanations about almost every possible subject. I have used YouTube videos for everything from installing an air filter in my car to learning specific software programs. What you may not realize is that there are thousands of videos about a multitude of genealogically related topics. 

YouTube is divided up into "Channels." Anyone who wants to take the time can create their own channel and start uploading videos. Here is a link to a video with 2,265,295 views (as of the date of this post) about how to create a YouTube Channel. 

How To Create A YouTube Channel! (2020 Beginner’s Guide)

You can search YouTube by clicking in the search field at the top of each YouTube page. You can see the search field marked by a magnifying glass icon in the image above of The Family History Guide YouTube Channel page. Very few genealogy-related YouTube Channel pages get millions of views. The most popular channels are sponsored by the large online genealogy database/family tree websites such as the following:

• Ancestry.com https://www.youtube.com/user/AncestryCom
• MyHeritage.com https://www.youtube.com/user/MyHeritageLtd
• Findmypast.com https://www.youtube.com/user/findmypast
• FamilySearch.org https://www.youtube.com/user/FamilySearch

You can subscribe to a channel and get notices from YouTube whenever a new video is posted to that channel. Of course, my wife and I have been posting videos to YouTube for years as volunteer missionaries at the Brigham Young University Family History Library. Here is the BYU Family History Library YouTube Channel. 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7hqNOQt-2AfeVEpDuc7sCA

Currently, there are YouTube videos with over six billion (yes, you read that right) views. Most of the really popular videos are music related with a few kid's videos thrown in. The most popular genealogy-related video on YouTube might be one by Ancestry.com called Descendants of Honor with 6.9 million views. This video is less than a minute long. But the number of views often reflects the amount of advertising the sponsor invested in promoting the video. The most viewed video on the BYU Family History Library YouTube Channel has 57 thousand views which is more in line with the popularity of genealogy videos in general but it is about an hour long. A RootsTech video entitled Connect. Belong. RootsTech 2018 has 664 thousand views for comparison. That video is also short at less than two minutes. 

Another way of determining the popularity of a particular channel is the number of subscribers. Again, Ancestry.com has about 145,000 subscribers. 

There are really too many channels and individual videos to list in a blog post. You will need to explore what is there by searching YouTube.com.