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Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Beginning the Mayflower Quest Part Seven: Adding in another ancestral line


Post Card Public Domain Pilgrims on the shore of Massachusetts Bay

The Pilgrims are often depicted in popular culture as wearing only black and white clothing, with large golden buckles on their shoes and hats and long white collars. This stereotypical Pilgrim, however, is not historically accurate. The Pilgrims, in fact, wore a wide variety of colors. This is known because when a person died, an inventory was made of their estate for the purpose of probate: and often the color of various clothing items were mentioned. For example, long-time church member, Mary Ring, died in Plymouth in 1633, and her estate included a "mingled-color" waistcoat, two violet waistcoats, three blue aprons, a red petticoat, a violet petticoat, blue stockings, and white stockings. In addition, she owned gray cloth, blue cloth and red cloth, ready to make additional clothing. Plymouth's Church Elder William Brewster, who died in 1644, owned green pants, a red cap, a violet coat, and a blue suit. And Governor William Bradford, when he died in 1657, owned a green gown, violet cloak, and a red waistcoat.
So this old postcard from the 1930s is not too far off but the popular iconic depictions usually shown during the Thanksgiving season are very misleading. By the way, almost half the passengers on the Mayflower were fare-paying and seeking a new life and not driven by religious convictions. Despite the lack of religion, all of the passengers are frequently referred to as "Pilgrims."

I am working on my most prominent Mayflower lines in this series. The objective is to help decrease the number of changes being made almost daily to Francis Cooke LZ2F-MM7 in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree. During the course of writing this series, I will be explaining in excruciating detail the research and background that go into maintaining a "Revolving Door" ancestor or ancestral line. During this initial period of this project, I will be checking each of the ancestral lines regularly (daily) for any changes. I have already found some very competent and persistent genealogists who have the background and the motivation to add and correct even my information. Thanks. 

Anyway, Francis Cooke's son, John Cooke 99WH-WYF married Richard Warren's KXML-7XC daughter, Sarah Warren 93WJ-W32. So both Francis Cooke and Richard Warren are my direct line ancestors. I posted a 4 generation family group record in Part Five of this series showing this part of my family lines. (See links below). As I have mentioned previously, both Francis and John Cooke were Mayflower passengers. 

One of my earliest discoveries when I first began my genealogical research path was that there is almost nothing known about the parents or ancestry of almost all the Mayflower passengers. There is some speculation (including my own) about the reason for this lack of information but the reality is that over a hundred years of genealogical research has failed to document most of the passenger's parents and the few that are known are subject to intense scrutiny. The results of all this research are that it is fairly simple to correct any unsourced or unfounded additions or changes to the Mayflower passengers. The problem is that they are subject to almost constant changes. 

OK, so some of this is repetitious but so is correcting the changed entries. 

 Richard Warren KXML-7XC has 69 attached sources on the Family Tree. Here is the citation to the Silver Book about Richard Warren.

Wakefield, Robert S., John Bradley Arthaud, Jane Fletcher Fiske, and Judith Haddock Swan. 2011. Mayflower families through five generations. descendants of the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in December 1620 Volume 18, part 2, Volume 18, part 2.

According to the program Relative Finder, which looks for links through my family lines on the FamilySearch Family Tree, I also have Myles Standish as a direct line ancestor but the Family Tree can find no such relationship. Looking down four generations from Myles Standish I cannot see any familiar surnames so I doubt that possible connection. 

The most recent changes on the Family Tree for Richard Warren look to have been corrected quickly by people who know about the actual sources and history but I will start watching my entire line of ancestors and as possible their descendants. 

See these previous posts:

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