I only stumbled onto this newsletter a day ago, and I keep finding posts to it that so closely resemble things I've said myself that I wind up idly wondering, did I actually write this in some nearby parallel world? Am I dreaming right now?
Just the other day I was emailing a friend who happens to be one of the thirty-something people I've done some ancestry research for (all on a hobbyist basis, I'm not a pro). This friend is one of the two people in the database of all my research who has the largest number of American "near" ancestors (post-1750, more or less) who were prominent in business, politics, science, and/or the arts, and I was pointing out to him the odd fact that he and the other person with a lot of that kind of ancestors are _also_ the people in the chart with (1) deep New England ancestry who (2) have the _fewest_ Mayflower ancestors. Whereas the people in my database who have (1) extensive New England ancestry, (2) have nobody, or almost nobody, notable in their "near" ancestry, and (3) were born and raised in modest circumstances...disproportionately tend to have eight or more Mayflower-passenger ancestors. As I said to my friend, it's weird and a little ironic that Mayflower ancestry became such a fetish among a certain kind of Americans in the nineteenth century, because it was actually the people who came over on the Winthrop Fleet ten years later and founded Boston who are overrepresented in the traceable ancestry of the old-line American upper class.
That matches my experience exactly. Even within my own ancestry, which is only 1/8 Yankee. The Mayflower line (there is exactly one) only revealed itself from the other side of a brick wall. And that brick wall ancestor was a very obscure veteran of the War of 1812 who died owning no real property. He, of course, wouldn't have known of his descent from Mary Chilton and I very much doubt he would have cared.
Thanks to Thanksgiving, the Mayflower is the only thing from colonial New England with any cultural currency. That and the Salem Witch Trials, but Salem descendants only appear in horror films. And, OK, Harvard and Yale.
I only stumbled onto this newsletter a day ago, and I keep finding posts to it that so closely resemble things I've said myself that I wind up idly wondering, did I actually write this in some nearby parallel world? Am I dreaming right now?
Just the other day I was emailing a friend who happens to be one of the thirty-something people I've done some ancestry research for (all on a hobbyist basis, I'm not a pro). This friend is one of the two people in the database of all my research who has the largest number of American "near" ancestors (post-1750, more or less) who were prominent in business, politics, science, and/or the arts, and I was pointing out to him the odd fact that he and the other person with a lot of that kind of ancestors are _also_ the people in the chart with (1) deep New England ancestry who (2) have the _fewest_ Mayflower ancestors. Whereas the people in my database who have (1) extensive New England ancestry, (2) have nobody, or almost nobody, notable in their "near" ancestry, and (3) were born and raised in modest circumstances...disproportionately tend to have eight or more Mayflower-passenger ancestors. As I said to my friend, it's weird and a little ironic that Mayflower ancestry became such a fetish among a certain kind of Americans in the nineteenth century, because it was actually the people who came over on the Winthrop Fleet ten years later and founded Boston who are overrepresented in the traceable ancestry of the old-line American upper class.
That matches my experience exactly. Even within my own ancestry, which is only 1/8 Yankee. The Mayflower line (there is exactly one) only revealed itself from the other side of a brick wall. And that brick wall ancestor was a very obscure veteran of the War of 1812 who died owning no real property. He, of course, wouldn't have known of his descent from Mary Chilton and I very much doubt he would have cared.
Thanks to Thanksgiving, the Mayflower is the only thing from colonial New England with any cultural currency. That and the Salem Witch Trials, but Salem descendants only appear in horror films. And, OK, Harvard and Yale.