Where There's One, There Will be More

Much as I learned when I researched the family line entitling me to membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, the likelihood of being related to more than one individual bestowing membership privileges in a lineage society is quite possible. And now, just as I learned back then in my DAR application, the same may apply to membership in the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.

Yesterday, I mentioned descending from Elizabeth, the oldest child of John and Priscilla Alden. As the oldest child of one of the first Mayflower couples married in the New World, Elizabeth also achieved the status of being the first white woman born in the New England colony.

From the time of Elizabeth's 1623 birth until the time of her 1644 marriage, there had been other ships arriving in the New England area including, presumably, the one upon which her future husband William Pabodie arrived. William was noted as being from the colony of Duxbury, a locale near Plymouth colony incorporated in 1637 after the original Mayflower settlers were released from their contractual obligation to remain in a tight-knit community for the first seven years after their landing. Eventually, as the colonists spread out to establish farms in the area, the Alden family also had moved to Duxbury.

One genealogy of Elizabeth's descendants, drawn up over one hundred years ago, provides details of the thirteen children born to Elizabeth and her husband, William Pabodie. For our purposes, the one we are interested in following next is their eighth child, Ruth.

Ruth, born to Elizabeth and William in 1658, married at a young age in 1673 a man by the name of Benjamin Bartlett. Here we see one Mayflower descendant marrying another Mayflower descendant—not a surprising occurrence, considering we are by this point barely over fifty years out since the landing of the Mayflower. The matter of the close-knit community compounds the possibility.

As the 1897 Elizabeth Alden genealogy put it, Ruth's intended was son and namesake of Benjamin Bartlett and Sarah Brewster Bartlett. Looking even further into Benjamin's own genealogy, now we begin to see more names we recognize from that list of the original Mayflower passengers:

He was grandson of Robert Bartlett who...married Mary, daughter of Richard Warren, a "Mayflower" pilgrim. He was also grandson of Love and Sarah (Collier) Brewster, and great-grandson of Elder William and Mary (  ) Brewster, who also came in the "Mayflower."

So technically, by virtue of this marriage of John and Priscilla Alden's granddaughter (and one of my ancestors) Ruth to Benjamin Bartlett, I can also say I am a descendant of Mayflower passenger Richard Warren, plus William Brewster and his wife, as well.

Above: Drawing, 1904, by Alfred Stevens Burbank, representing Elder William Brewster, published in 1911 in A. C. Addison's The Romantic Story of the Mayflower Pilgrims and Its Place in the Life of Today; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.