Captain John Alden....Mayflower.....Wowsy!

[OnionPatch]

I think I just traced my family back to freakin' John Alden of the Mayflower!!! Wow!!! :wow: I just started getting into genealogy recently and found all of this on Ancestry.com after getting the more recent names and dates from my mother. I'm pretty sure it's accurate as the names and dates all matched up nicely, but of course I'll have to check some more and try to verify.

The direct line goes like this:

Captain John Alden
Elizabeth Alden
Ruth Chester
Esther Cole
Samuel Atwood
Keziah Atwood
Joshua Gibbs
Lavina Gibbs
Mary McCall
My grandfather
My mother
Me

[OnionPatch]

1. Not sure why they call him "captain" in the record.

He wasn't the captain of the Mayflower but was the ship's cooper. I'll have to do more research. Maybe he was made a captain at some other point? I just read that he and Priscilla had more descendants than any other person on the Mayflower because they had 10 children. Anyone else have him in their tree?

[kestrel91316]

25. I am supposedly a descendant of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins by

their daughter Ruth. She supposedly married John Bass.

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. That ascent is apparently bogus.

Ruth Chester's parents are unknown and her surname is not even certain, being variously given as Chandler and Collier in addition to Chester. Also, she was born in 1627. Which makes it impossible that she could be a granddaughter of John Alden of the Mayflower, who married Priscilla Mullins c. 1622 or 1623.


User family trees on Ancestry should be taken with a very large grain of salt; much of the information is inaccurate, so never take it at face value and always look for corroborating evidence.

[OnionPatch]

3. Yep, I've been going over all that.

I'm pretty new to this and have been realizing how Ancestry is only as good as the records people put on it, so, you're right, this is probably bogus. But I've been finding lots of other fun and interesting things on the tree. I also have (confirmed) ties to the Howlands of the Mayflower, and other ancestors who came on the Anne and the Fortune, so I know there are Pilgrims in the tree, regardless of any Alden link. I'm having lots of fun with this, anyway, but won't get too excited about stuff I find until it's confirmed next time. ;)

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. Something to watch out for is data that cites the LDS database as a source

a lot of it is rather suspect and inaccurate, although there's a lot in the LDS International Genealogical Index that's useful, too (transcripts of English parish registers, for instance).

I've seen estimates that as many as fifty million people descend from Mayflower passengers (and possibly more); anyone with New England ancestry that goes back to the 1600's is likely to have at least one Mayflower passenger in their family tree.

[OnionPatch]

5. That's a lot of descendants.

That kind of makes it fun, too. A friend was teasing me because Ancestry.com says I'm related to GW Bush through my pilgrim ancestors. Then I discovered that my friend is related through his Mayflower ancestors to Sarah Palin, lol. That turned out to be a very effective comeback. :D We guessed that half the country is related to Bush and Palin in this way, and from what you say, we were right. That many generations back, doesn't one have a couple thousand great-grandparents or something?

I'm lucky that my aunts have done a great job on my dad's side of the family. They did hardcore research before Ancestry.com was even around. So I've been trying to do my mom's line and it's a challenge. But it's a lot of fun. I'll watch for LDS data, thanks. I'll have a chance to check out some courthouse records this summer, too, so maybe I can clear up some of my mysteries and dead ends.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

7. Hi cousin!

Like you, I'm related to Bush via some New England ancestors (the Fletchers). I started doing genealogical research in 1978, long before the Internet made it easy, and have even taught classes to senior citizens (some of whom wound up being cousins as well!).

If your mom's ancestry went through upstate New York to New England, we may have some common lines. PM me with surnames and I'll check.

[OnionPatch]

9. I'm actually related to him down no less than three lines!

Argh!! Two of the lines are related to Pappy and one to Babs. Yikes. And these are all lines my aunt, the college professor genealogist, researched, so I'm guessing it's pretty accurate. (Too bad she's passed away now, I could get research tips from her.) I'm also related to Laura Ingalls Wilder in a similar way, so that makes up for it all. :D

Some of the surnames from my (true) early Massachusetts ancestors are Adams, Allen and Pickering. The other really old names (early American immigrant) in my tree were from Elizabeth City, Jamestown and Henrico, Virginia in the 1600s. One of them traded a kettle for a whole mess of land from an Indian. :blush:

[pipi_k]

22. I noticed you have an "Allen" in your list...just wondering

if you are related somehow to the Sarah Allen who was captured by Indians in Deerfield, MA and brought to Canada.

I've done some genealogy stuff myself and I thought nearly all of my ancestors were French Canadian, but it turned out that this Sarah Allen (English) married a French man in Canada so I have some English too.

Don't know about my mom's side...those ancestors are very weird mysteries yet to be uncovered...

Anyway....Sarah Allen...related?

:)

[TuxedoKat]

12. LOL, that's

about when I started, 1979. I lived in DC at the time and worked next door to the National Archives building so I would often go there during my lunch hour and look up stuff. I also frequented the Library of Congress and the DAR Library. Alot of the work on my surname had been done by family members wanting to join the DAR, but I would do research on the spouses whose family histories were no less interesting. I'm related to Bush too, through many NE ancestors. See above message.

[TuxedoKat]

11. Hello cousins

I found out inadvertently during the 2004 election that I was related to both Bush and Kerry, and with more lines to Bush than Kerry. This was when I was looking up info on the surname "Dwight" and discovered this on their bulletin board. There is a website that has all the presidents' and other prominent persons' genealogies, but I haven't bothered to see if I am distantly related to any other famous folks. It's fun to find out you are distantly related to someone but of course, so is half of the rest of the US too most likely.

My husband is your cousin too as he is descended from John Alden and Priscilla Mullen (sp) too.

[fudge stripe cookays]

14. Thank God I'm not one of them.

I'm one of the few that escaped all that. I'm like 3/4 Kraut from various sources. Yay!

[OnionPatch]

10. Aside from Ruth Chester, I had something more recent wrong.

Ancestry.com kept giving me a hint for someone with the same name, born the same year, in the same area as my g-g-grandmother. I finally found this woman in some other records, married to someone who was not my g-g-grandfather. I eventually figured out who my real g-g-grandmother was, and found a lot of history on her and her family. She's now one of my favorite people in my tree. I wouldn't trade her for any old Mayflower link. ;) Although, I suppose with the same name in the same area, that long ago, my g-g-grandmother may be related to that other woman somewhere along the line.

[CBHagman]

21. Corroboration is key.

Even in official records I've found errors, and of course the great bane of genealogical researchers is mistranscription of records. Both Ancestry and EllisIsland.org have had my ancestors in databases with misspelled names.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. Know your sources

World Connect and Ancestry family trees are not required to have any verification or citation of sources. However, if you can get hold of papers from DAR/SAR folks or from The Mayflower Society, you are more likely to have found the genuine information, as these groups require verification.

I fell into this trap on my father's line, where someone at World Connect claimed Mayflower descent for my Barbara Lash. I went to the local library which has a book on each of the Mayflower passengers, documenting lineage, and the claimed descent went up in smoke.

[OnionPatch]

8. What happened was Ancestry hints kept trying to link me to

a person of the same name, born the same year, in the same area as my g-g-grandmother. That person happened to go back to John Alden. Since I was very new to this, I bought it. I'm a lot more careful now with the hints they give. I did finally find my real g-g-grandmother, and her story turned out to be interesting. She was one of three sets of twins. Her older brother and her 52-year-old father went off to the Civil War together. (Union) At Gettysburg, the father had his ear shot off and the brother was killed. Her mother's father was one of the first citizens and businessman of a little town in Pennsylvania, so there is tons of info about his family out there. I still haven't been able to trace them back further than the late 1700's, so who knows, maybe they actually have Mayflower ancestors, too, lol. I doubt it, though. Some of them are Pennsylvania Dutch from the Netherlands. I'm guessing some are probably Scots-Irish, as my tree is full of them. I'm still digging and having lots of fun. And being a lot more careful!

[madinmaryland]

13. My ancesters, Pennsylvania Dutch, came to America in the late 1730's.

One thing you can do is check ship registeries for your family names. There was a book written about my family name a few years ago. The authors (distant-very) cousins of mine, did most of the research. Our family came in through Philadelphia and settled in the Reading, PA area. In the mid 1840's my g-g-g-grandfather moved his family to Jefferson County, PA.

There was a mass exodus in sourthern Germany during the 1720's and 1730's, which is where my ancestors came from.

[dalaigh lllama]

16. Mine, too

I didn't even know our family was German (aka Pennsylvania Dutch) until I did our family genealogy because the name is now Anglicized. It turned out my dad's ancestors came here in 1731 from a town called Preuschdorf in Alsace-Lorraine and were German Lutherans. They were evidently tired of the wars over whether they should be Catholic or Lutheran, French or German. Oddly enough, my mom's French Catholic ancestors came from a town about 30 miles from there about 100 years later. I can certainly understand why our ancestors were so adamant about separation between Church and State. Too bad so many now are ignorant of history.

[Joe Chi Minh]

17. I believe a lot of people emigrated from Europe to escape "religious" persecution.

[fudge stripe cookays]

15. I freaking hate that.

Newbies who do not document are the bane of genealogy research (apoligies to onionpatch). And I should know...I used to be one too!

I think we all were at some time. But the first piece of advice I give anyone just starting out is, "As you start your tree, don't be SO eager to put in information that you enter anything from anywhere.

Be sparing, and do not put in a fact until you have documentation for it. If you don't have proven documentation, at least enter where you got that fact from. Use it as a basis for future research. But if someone asks you,'Where did you find that?', you can say, "Some idiot on the LDS database who didn't document."

[OnionPatch]

18. I do now. Meticulously.

I always make sure the things I'm not completely sure about are flagged as such. I also kept my tree on Ancestry.com private so I wouldn't share any mistakes I have with others. Live and learn.

[fudge stripe cookays]

19. Live and learn indeed.

When I decided to go hardcore with my tree, I had to completely reconstruct it from the shoddy one I started out with. A pain, yes, but now I know where every single fact in it comes from. And I've done ALL the work on this one.

I just surpassed 6500 people the other day. I hate saying it like that, because collecting cousins is not my intent. It drives me crazy when people just want to brag about how many people are in their tree. Well do you have documented, proven facts for all those people? Or did you just collect them from other peoples' trees out on the internet?

My intent was to take an entire branch (my dad's dad's side...) and trace every branch in it to its logical endpoints. With only a few exceptions, I've managed to do that.

[grasswire]

20. does your Howland line still hold up?

If so, we are cousins. I am a direct descendant of John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, Mayflower Pilgrims. John's claim to fame is that he fell off the Mayflower at sea, and was only saved because someone dropped him a halyard to grab. Elizabeth was just a girl on coming to the New World, and orphaned the first winter. Hard times, hard times.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

23. Lots of places to check this

I'd look at New England Historical and Genealogical Society's records. Ancestry--well, I contributed to them when they just started up, and I've noticed since that some of their information isn't backed up with citations, etc--just family trees folks submitted.

BTW, if you find it is true, you may wish to join the Mayflower Society. I've helped two cousins do this via my research--my ancestor was Stephen Hopkins.

[sybylla]

24. Stephen Hopkins is one of many Mayflower ancestors my husband has

But he has no interest in doing the Mayflower Society membership. He comes from several old Connecticut and Massachusetts lines which lead back to several Mayflower passengers.

What does it take to become a member?

Most of the research that has led me to his Mayflower ancestors is through published family histories(usually two or more corroborating with documentation/citations) as I don't have access to New England records. I can't imagine that's enough documentation.

[kestrel91316]

26. I have a Hopkins in NY in the early 1800's (or rather my BIL's line does, lol).

It then goes back to MA. So I wonder if it's the Mayflower Hopkins folks.......