Wedgwood saucer commemorating the Mayflower 350th anniversary in 1970, inherited from my maternal grandmother |
Note to my family members: The Woodruff line of my family does not have any Mayflower connections that I’ve been able to discern, and given that I have traced the Woodruff line back to the days of the Pilgrims, it is unlikely that one will emerge. The Mayflower descent outlined below is through my mother’s family, so it applies to my mother, my brother, his son, our maternal first cousins, my mother’s maternal first cousins (full and half-cousins), and me (and many other extended family members too).
About the Mayflower Crossing

The ships sailed from Southampton on August 5, 1620, but the
Speedwell soon sprang a leak, so they
docked at Dartmouth to effect repairs. The ships set sail again, but about 200
miles past Lands End, the Speedwell
again began to take on water, so the two ships returned to Plymouth, England,
where the decision was made to leave the Speedwell
behind and make the journey with just one ship, the Mayflower.
The Mayflower
voyage was fraught. Having used up precious stores during its one-month delay
that were not replenished, it was not well supplied for the journey. Also, the
delay meant that the now-overcrowded ship ran into significant gales in September
at the start of its voyage, when it originally should have been nearing the end
of its journey.
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Mayflower II, a sea-worthy replica ready for launch in 2019 after the 63 year old ship was completely refurbished at Mystic Seaport |
During the winter, when a contagious disease spread through the ship, many of the settlers and crew died, leaving only 53 Pilgrims and about half the original crew. The passengers lived on board the ship through the winter, building their colony and supplementing their provisions until they were finally able to disembark and take up residence on March 21, 1621, more than seven months after they had originally departed Southampton. The Mayflower then set sail on April 5, 1621 to return to England. The ship made excellent time due to favorable winds, arriving just a month later on May 6, 1621, and the Mayflower captain, Christopher Jones, reported the colony’s new location, no longer the mouth of the Hudson.
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Cushman family monument at the Burial Ground in Plymouth, MA |
The Fortune started a return journey to England with a valuable cargo to trade on behalf of the colony, but was taken by the French, who commandeered the goods, finally allowing the ship to return, with crew and passengers but no cargo, to London. Robert Cushman had returned on Fortune, leaving his son behind, in the care of William Bradford, governor of the colony. Robert died in England in 1625 without making a return journey.
After these challenging beginnings, the colony finally began
to stabilize, put up sufficient stores for winter, and was able to establish
successful trade with England and other colonies.
The impact of European exposure to the indigenous people of
the region is another story entirely and one that is only now starting to be
widely acknowledged. To understand more about the impact, this piece from The
World on Public Broadcasting in 2014 is a good place to start: Public Radio: Native Americans Tell Their Side
2020 Commemorations
There are numerous organizations that began 2020 with the
intention of commemorating the Mayflower
quadricentennial, but many of those plans have changed due to the current
crisis. The General Society of Mayflower Descendants (the “Mayflower Society”) had
planned a special Mayflower Congress in September 2020 to highlight the
anniversary, but it’s not clear if that is now being planned as a virtual event.
(In fact, their website doesn’t appear to have been updated since the COVID-19
crisis began.) Their 2020 Commemoration site [Mayflower Society 2020 Commemoration] was last updated in
2019.
In the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, there is an
organization, Mayflower400, which organized events throughout different sites
in the UK and in Leiden, Netherlands. Although many events are canceled or
postponed, the organization has established a well-designed website with Mayflower stories, an interactive
passenger list, and information on numerous European locations with Pilgrim
ties. Even with the scheduled events in doubt, the website provides a wealth of
interesting information about the Pilgrims’ origin stories. [Mayflower400]
The most comprehensive commemorative efforts I’ve found were
already well underway in 2019 at the New England Historic and Genealogical
Society (NEGHS) [American Ancestors].
They entered into agreement with the Mayflower Society several years ago to
digitize the Mayflower Quarterly publication and to provide the fifth
generation of Mayflower descendants
online for NEHGS members. To begin their Mayflower
commemoration, in 2019 the NEHGS commissioned and displayed a scale model
replica of the Mayflower on the
street in front of their Boston library. In addition, they have included an education
program that focuses on the Wampanoag Nation, relaying the impact of the
Pilgrims’ landing and making a solid attempt at providing an unvarnished
history.
The NEHGS has created its own Mayflower webpage, with a lot of interesting interactive sections,
including more information on the passengers, a map of the world with the
locations/photos of current day Mayflower
descendants, Mayflower descent charts
and certificates, and a lot more. It’s a user-friendly site that also offers
the expertise of the NEHGS research staff to provide Mayflower Society proof
documentation, popular now, as interest in proving the Mayflower descent increases with the onset of a stay at home 2020. [NEHGS Mayflower]
And finally, Plimouth Plantation, the interactive living
museum that depicts the lives of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag in Plymouth,
MA, is in the process of a complete refurbishment of the Mayflower II replica, a 1956 gift from the United Kingdom. The ship
was scheduled to officially launch from its place of restoration, the Mystic
Seaport museum, in spring 2020, but it is not clear that this has occurred. The
sites related to the restoration have not been updated, and, although Plimouth
Plantation is open to a limited number of visitors in outdoor areas only, the
status of the Mayflower II is not
clear from their website. [Plimouth Plantation]
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Elizabeth McLellan Gould Rowland circa 1875 |
My Mayflower
Connections
In 1915, my great-great grandmother, Elizabeth McLellan
Gould Rowland (my maternal grandmother’s grandmother) wrote a family history,
documenting her paternal Gould line and her maternal Chase line. She typed out
three copies, added photographs, and presented them to her three children at
Christmas that year. In this “Gould-Chase Book”, she recounts two different Mayflower ancestors.
Disproving an Accepted Mayflower Connection
First, the “Gould-Chase Book” outlines a descent from Mayflower passenger Francis Cooke
through his daughter, Jane Cooke. Jane married Experience Mitchell (who does not
have a Mayflower connection), and the
family line through their son, Jacob Mitchell is detailed. In 1915, this
descent was accepted as valid, and I’m sure many people were confirmed as
members of the Mayflower Society on the basis of a descent from Jane Cooke and
Experience Mitchell.

Our descent is from Experience
Mitchell’s fifth child, Jacob, who was born well after Jane Cooke’s death, to a
second wife, whose first name, Mary, is all that is known about her. No one in
the family knew about this more recent research disproving our descent from
Francis Cooke until I unearthed it as I began to look for proofs.
In one fell swoop, with a few clicks of a mouse (and with less
than an hour of online research), I had eliminated one of our two Mayflower connections! I’ve seen
indications that the Mayflower Society continued to admit descendants of all of
Experience’s children as late as 1983, but I doubt that they would accept such
a descent today.
I still had the other Mayflower
connection to research and review, but I was starting to realize that instead
of providing Mayflower proofs, I
might have bad news to report at that upcoming family reunion.
To be continued.
(Not-so-spoiler alert: as I’ve already made reference to a
proven descent, above: I was able to prove that second connection.)
Sources
and Reference Sites:
New England Historic and Genealogical Society’s Mayflower 2020
site: https://mayflower.americanancestors.org/
Mayflower 400 site: https://www.mayflower400uk.org/
The Mayflower Society: https://www.themayflowersociety.org/
Plimouth Plantation museum site: https://www.plimoth.org/
Wikipedia Mayflower page: Wikipedia contributors. (2020, June 29). Mayflower. In Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15:37, July 4, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mayflower&oldid=965067764
Wikipedia Fortune page: Wikipedia contributors. (2020, January 22). Fortune (Plymouth Colony
ship). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15:38, July 4, 2020, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fortune_(Plymouth_Colony_ship)&oldid=937101891
Native Americans get the change to tell their side of the Pilgrim
story, The World, November 17, 2014: https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-11-17/native-americans-get-chance-tell-their-side-pilgrim-story
Robert Cushman Memorial and Signature photos: Massachusetts and
More Genealogy Blog, Robert Cushman 1577/78-1625 and Sarah Reader/Reder (ca
1580-1616) of England, Holland and Plymouth, MA, March 8, 2013 (Signature
further credited to Mayflower Descendant, Spring 2011) http://massandmoregenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/03/robert-cushman-157778-1625-and-sarah.html
Mayflower II Photo, David Brooks own work file:Mayflower II pre-launch.jpg. (2020, February 5). Wikimedia Commons, the free
media repository. Retrieved 20:13, July 4, 2020 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Mayflower_II_pre-launch.jpg&oldid=392342145.
“Not All the Children of Experience Mitchell are
Mayflower Descendants,” Robert S. Wakefield, The American Genealogist,
Volume 59 (1983), pages 28-31. New Haven, CT: D. L. Jacobus, 1937-. (Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2009 -2020.)
“Comments
on the Two Wives of Experience Mitchell of Plymouth, Mass,” John B. Threlfall, The
New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume 127 (1973), pages
94-95. Boston, MA: New England Historic Genealogical
Society, 1847-. (Online database: AmericanAncestors.org, New England
Historic Genealogical Society, 2001-2020.)
Daniel Woodruff- thank you for your interesting story. I also seem to have a Mayflower connection thru' Thomas Brewster who was with the original Leiden group. We drove around Newfoundland in 1997, celebrating the 500th Anniversary of John Cabot's landing there. At Fairyland founded in 1610, just south of St. John's there is an historic plaque commemorating the re-provisioning of the Mayflower in 1620.This actual route is shown on 2 route maps on the MF site but almost deliberately ignored elsewhere. Robert Saylor Goodall, Vancouver , B.C.
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