New Mayflower ancestors

Four of the households that crossed on the Mayflower in 1620 are among the tree’s direct ancestors. Three of them come down to Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), and one to Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006). A fifth, John Alden, was long claimed as well; the claim does not hold, and how it came apart is part of the story.

All four lines reach a passenger of that first voyage. In the Brewster and Allerton lines the child the descent runs through crossed as well; in the Howland line the next generation was born at Plymouth a few years later, and in the Cooke line the daughter came over in 1623 with her mother. The Mayflower carried 102 passengers, and about half of them died in the first winter at Plymouth. Of the eleven passengers in these four lines, eight were among the survivors. Three died that first winter: Mary Norris in February 1621, and Elizabeth Tilley’s parents, John and Joan Tilley, “a little after they came ashore”, in William Bradford’s words.

Everything below comes from records or from the standard genealogies of the Mayflower families, the “Silver Books” of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, which cite their records one by one. Where a link rests on less than that, the text says so.

Brewster

William Brewster was the postmaster of Scrooby in Nottinghamshire and the leader of the separatist congregation^W that met in his house and later went into exile in Holland. He sailed in 1620 with his wife Mary and their two youngest sons, and served as the Elder of the Plymouth church until he died in 1644. Mary died at Plymouth in 1627. Her maiden name has never been found; four centuries of searching have not settled it.

Their son Love Brewster crossed with them as a boy. From Love the line runs through his son Wrestling, his granddaughter Mary Brewster (1678–1761), and her son Jonathan Holmes (1709–1787). Frederic Roger Curtis was William Brewster’s ninth great-grandson.

Allerton

Isaac Allerton, a merchant of the Leiden congregation, sailed with his wife Mary Norris and three children, Bartholomew, Remember and Mary. The first winter was brutal for them. Mary Norris gave birth to a stillborn son aboard the ship in Plymouth harbour in December 1620, and died herself in February. Isaac later married Fear, a daughter of William Brewster, so the Brewster and Allerton families were joined long before their lines met again in this family.

Their daughter Mary Allerton, about three when she crossed, married Thomas Cushman, the long-serving elder of the Plymouth church, and lived until 1699. When she died she was the last of the Mayflower passengers still living. Her line runs through her son Isaac Cushman (1648–1732), her granddaughter Mary Cushman, and Mary’s daughter Mary Waterman (1716–1749).

Here two of the lines meet. Mary Waterman married Jonathan Holmes, the Brewster descendant, and their daughter Mary Holmes (born 1745) carried both the Brewster and the Allerton descents. Her daughter Mary Morton was the mother of Waterman Curtis (1793–1859), and from him the line runs straight down to Frederic Roger Curtis.

Howland

John Howland crossed as a servant in the household of Governor John Carver, and Elizabeth Tilley as a girl with her parents, John Tilley and Joan (Hurst) Tilley. Her parents died in the first winter; she married John Howland a few years later. Their daughter Desire Howland, probably named for Desire Minter, a girl who had crossed in the same household, married John Gorham, and is named as “Desire Gorham” in her father’s will of 1672.

This line comes down by a different road from the other two: through Desire’s daughter Desire Gorham, then the Hawes and Sherman families, to Annis Wheaton (1827–1883), the mother of Hubert Orestes Curtis. The step from Desire Howland to her daughter rests on published studies of the Gorham family, not on a record naming the daughter’s parents.

Cooke

Francis Cooke was living at Leiden, probably English-born, several years before the Pilgrim congregation arrived there. In 1603 he married Hester Mahieu, whose family were French-speaking Walloon^W Protestant refugees. He crossed in 1620 with his son John, and Hester followed in 1623 with the other children, among them Jane Cooke, who married Experience Mitchell at Plymouth.

This is Nancy Jane Blanchard’s line. It runs through Jane’s daughter Elizabeth Mitchell and the Washburn, Kingsley and Packard families of Bridgewater to Susanna Packard, born there on 24 August 1736, whose granddaughter Polly Knapp married Noah Blanchard. The upper part of this line was entered in the tree only in 2026, though it had long been on a descendancy chart in the family papers; the Cooke Silver Book confirms it link by link, down to Susanna’s exact birth date.

Two links are weaker than the rest. The Silver Book calls Elizabeth Mitchell’s descent from Jane Cooke circumstantial: it rests on William Bradford’s remark, about 1650, that Francis Cooke had lived to see “his children’s children have children”, and Elizabeth was the only grandchild who then had any. And the book stops at Susanna Packard’s birth; that she is the Susanna who married Joseph Knapp rests on the date and the town. Neither is in serious doubt, but neither is proved by a single record.

John Alden: a claim that fails

The 1994 descendancy chart also brought down a line from John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, through their daughter Ruth and the Bass, Webb and Arnold families of Braintree, to a Mary Thayer, daughter of James Thayer and Deborah Arnold, who married Nicholas Blanchard in 1789. Mary Thayer herself is certainly in the line: she is Noah Blanchard’s mother. But the published Thayer genealogy lists all thirteen children of James and Deborah, and there is no Mary among them.

A second look in 2026 first identified her as a Weymouth girl, “Molle”, a daughter of Obadiah Thayer born in 1762, whom the 1874 Thayer genealogy married to a Nicholas Blanchard. That identification was entered in the tree and then withdrawn. A history of Weymouth published in 1923 gives her age at death as 58, which fits a birth about 1769, not 1762. The Braintree town register settles it: “Mary Thayer, the Daughter of Noah Thayer & Mary his wife born January 2d. 1770.” The Alden Silver Book shows no Alden descent through any of the Thayer families concerned. It also shows that Alden had no daughter Grace, a claim that circulates online.

How the story arose is not recorded, but one detail is suggestive. A Braintree deed of 1746 shows the land of Deborah Arnold’s brothers, who really were Alden descendants, lying next to the land of the heirs of Dependence French, the wife of a Braintree Thayer. Braintree Thayers and the Alden-descended Arnolds were neighbours. Somewhere between Braintree and the 1994 chart, neighbours became kin.

Updated 2026-09-28