My Mayflower Ancestors

An estimated 35 million Americans have Mayflower ancestors, according to one source, with me, my daughter and son being three of them. FamilySearch.com's Relative Finder, which I haven't been impressed with in the recent past, says I am related to 3 families & Richard Warren that were on that famous boat.

Surprisingly, the RootsTech/Family Search/Relative Finder (RF) contention that I have 10 Mayflower passengers as ancestors is correct. The other passengers besides Stephen Hopkins and daughter Constance and Richard Warren are William & Mary Brewster through their son Love plus John & Joan (Hurst) (Rogers) Tilley through their daughter Elizabeth & husband John Howland. Each of the lines of descent culminates in my Miller line. My first cousins through my father's brother's wife also have the Tilleys and John Howland in their tree. History is cool!

RF tried to tell me I also had Edward Doty as an ancestor but that was wrong. They had the wrong parents of Rhoda Louisa Moore Dockham listed - the father was born in 1832, 19 years AFTER Rohda and her supposed mother was born 30 years later. WIERD!!

My line of descent from Stephen Hopkins and daughter Constance:

  • Stephan Hopkins and Mary Kent*, 11th great grandparents
  • Their daughter, Constance Hopkins, and Nicholas Snow, 10th great grandparents
  • Their daughter, Mary Snow, and Thomas Paine**, 9th great grandparents
  • Their son, Elisha Paine, and Rebecca Doane, 8th great grandparents
  • Their daughter, Abigail Paine, and Josiah Cleaveland***, 7th great grandparents
  • Their son, Elisha Cleaveland, and Ruth Paine****, 6th great grandparents
  • Their daughter, Sarah Cleveland*****, and Reuben Stickney, 5th great grandparents
  • Their daughter, Lydia Stickney, and Levi William Gardner, 4th great grandparents
  • Their daughter, Adaline Gardner, and Daniel Dibble Fenn, 3rd great grandparents
  • Their son, Oscar A. Fenn, and Salina E. Wilson, 2nd great grandparents
  • Their daughter, Cora Adaline Fenn and Frank Augustus Miller, great grandparents
  • Their daughter, Ruth Mary Miller and Alphonsus Edward Ward, Sr., grandparents
  • Their son and my father, Robert Hudson Ward and Marjorie Jean O'Brien
  • Me
  • The asterisks:

    • * - Mary Kent died in May, 1613, according to the NBC show "Who Do You Think You Are?" and Ancestry. Stephen was struggling to survive in the New World then. More to the story. Stephen Hopkins married Elizabeth Fisher and had a child, Demaris, by the time they boarded the Mayflower. Son Oceanus was born during the voyage, so I have few hundred thousand half-cousins from those lines too.
    • ** - Thomas Paine, Elisha Paine, Abagail Paine and Ruth Paine had 2 common ancestors. They were directly related, just different generations. A WIP, Work In Progress, is trying to connect the family to the famous Revolutionary War patriot, Thomas Paine. That's "Common Sense," hey? Declaration of Independece signer Robert Treat Paine is a 2C8R, 2nd cousin 8x removed, another one RF got right.
    • *** - The Cleavelands changed their surname by removing the "a".
    • ***** - Sarah Cleveland had six great grandparents, not the usual 8. Soloman Paine, father of Ruth Paine, was a sibling of Abagail Paine. Soloman and Abagail have Elisha Paine and Rebecca Doane as parents. That means that Sarah Cleveland was her own second cousin. See my Cleveland page for more info and a chart.

    Sources

    List of famous cousins via the Mayflower folks: Allison Janney, actor, plus Norman Rockwell, artist (Stephen Hopkins); Amelia Earhart (Richard Warren); Julia Child, chef, (William Brewster); and Humphrey Bogart, actor (John & Joan Hurst Tilley, daughter Elizabeth & husband John Howland). Source for all but Ms. Janney - History Channel.

    More famous people who are descendants of the same Mayflower passengers that I am: Katherine Hepburn, Bing Crosby (William Brewster). Source: FamilySearch.com.

    I'm related to Amelia Earhart another way in addition to Richard Warren: Relative Finder has Ms. Earhart and I aligned with Robert Royce (1605-1676) and Mary Sims as common ancestors. Henry Wadworth Longfellow is a descendant of William & Mary Brewster and also a descendant of two of my 8th greats, Samuel Bragdon & Mary Moulton. I'm not quite sold on Mary's maiden name yet. Activist Angela Davis (same birthday as mine but different years) and actor Tamera Mowry are also related, being descendants of William & Mary Brewster. Source - Ancestry.com and the PBS seires "Finding Your Roots."

    Two of many links to famous American descendants of Mayflower passengers - MayflowerHistory.com and AmericanAncestors.org.

    Article about John Howland & Elizabeth Tilley on the FamilySearch site.

    PDF descendancy charts from RelativeFinder.com: William Brewster, Richard Warren, Stephen Hopkins, John Tilley.

    Mayflower History website and The Mayflower400uk.com website. And an assist from Ancesty.com, FamilySearch.com, RelativeFinder.com and Wikipedia.com too.

    The Genealogy of the Cleveland and Cleaveland Families by Edmund Janes Cleveland and Horace Gillette Cleveland, available for download at Archive.org

    I'm not going to try joining any groups/societies/etc. Some have restrictive requirements like birth & death certificates to prove your lineage. The problem with that is the State of Ohio. For some odd reason, they have no death cert's before 1904 and 1908 at the county level. Several of my Gardner & Fenn ancestors are in the lines and lived in Ohio before 1900, so...