The General Society of Mayflower Descendants (GSMD) congress wrapped up this evening with a dinner and not one, but two speakers. One was the former US ambassador to the UK, Matthew Barzun, the other the official GSMD geneticist, Dr. Jason Kolowski. The latter announced to the few people who did not know it already that the General Society was teaming with FamilyTree DNA to promote more genetic testing among proven Mayflower descendants, particularly those with straight-line paternal or maternal connections. There will be some sort of discount available to Society members; stay tuned for details when I get them. I will add links to this site to make it easier to get there if you wish. 
I have personally done the y-DNA and mt-DNA tests and they seem useful if you are looking to find someone living to help you with your searching. I am not, being fortunate to have a family that moved a few miles away from Plymouth and then never left. The speaker was urging everyone in the Society to get tested. The benefit would be to the Society, which could then identify mass quantities of hitherto unknown humans who happen to be descendants of Mayflower pilgrims. Right now DNA tests are only used to help someone with a thoroughly documented line who gets stuck on just one ancestor. Would the GSMD be asking FamilyTree DNA to look through their records for people who match a particular genetic profile and so they can offer them membership? Would they do that person's research for him/her, just to get a new member? That doesn't seem fair to the members who worked for years, in many cases, to prove their connection. Furthermore, not everyone wants to be a Mayflower descendant or GSMD member and DNA results won't work for every line - some pilgrims invited siblings to come over on the next boat.
When I find out more, I will blog about it here.

Plymouth, MA has a variety of statues. One was erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) some time ago, the other was more recently. On the back of the statue commemorating women of the Mayflower is a list that appears to be complete because it includes females for whom no first name, no middle name, or no name at all is known. The second is one of many statues created apparently in response to a recent contest to immortalize a certain edible crustacean. This study in bluegreen is at the Jenney Grist Mill in downtown Plymouth. No two are alike. I guess they are a lighthearted counterbalance to the seriousness of half one's friends dying of disease and starvation. Come visit Plymouth and see them all.

The last thing we did tonight was a ghost lantern tour of Burial Hill above Plymouth, which we had walked through earlier in the day (when the stones were readable.) Burials began in the pilgrim's time (1620s) and continued until 1957. You will see stones commemorating people who died elsewhere, such as shipwreck victims, memorials to Pilgrim ancestors who aren't actually buried there and to a few who are (William Bradford and John Howland), and markers for service in various wars, including the Revolutionary War. Stones are in various stages of repair and you can see in one picture a preservation technique in which the original stone is encased in a harder material. Burial Hill overlooks the harbor and the site of the original meetinghouse/church was built.

An annual tradition is that after the opening ceremony members "parade" down the main street a short ways, around the corner, and up to the Winslow House, aka the Mayflower House. There they have snacks, tour the inside of the house, chat, look for names of people they know on the commemorative brick walkway, and compare costumes. You can borrow one, bring your own, or wear your own ordinary clothes, which is what I do.

At the official opening of the 41st General Congress today, Governor General Lee Sinclair Filson and a representative of the First Parish Church in Plymouth signed an agreement to create a nonprofit to essentially fund, repair, and maintain the church. The nonprofit will be run by a joint committee composed of church members and GSMD members.  If the GSMD can raise $3 million by 2020 for an endowment fund they will have full control of the committee; if not, it reverts to the parish. From the pictures below you can tell it was not the first church building in Plymouth, MA, being made of brick and being fairly ornate inside. Other churches built on the site previously burned down, but, services have been held there from 1620. Reenactors portrayed the armed militia.

We actually started off the morning at a different kind of church. The recreated watchtower/armory/meetinghouse/church building at Plimouth Plantation hosted us for a prayer service led by "William Brewster." Upstairs was the watchtower where again, armed men would have patrolled. The old church would have stood on the hill where the more modern church today stands, so the view of Plymouth Harbor would not have been exactly the same.

The announcement expected for tonight about the origins of either George Soule or Mary (Becket) Soule was to have been something about DNA studies. As it turned out, Hurricane Harvey has delayed the arrival of several batches of Soule cheek swabs, so we heard only part of the results. This gist is that they have gathered a good number of DNA samples from proven straight-line male Soule descendants here in the US. Each US sample, from all of George's sons who left male descendants, matched each other. The team then solicited donors in England from areas in which documentary research had shown a cluster of Soule families in the 1500s-1600s. The good news is that the men in those areas matched other men in their area but the bad news is that none of the results turned up an exact match for George. These results mean that it is unlikely George's origins were in West Sussex, southern Cambridgeshire, Buckinghamshire, Gloucestershire, or Bedfordshire. One group at least matched George's haplogroup (I, with the M-253 mutation indicating probable Scandinavian heritage) but with enough differences that any common ancestor lived several years ago, before the adoption of surnames. Results are still pending on the sample groups from Kent, East Sussex, North Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Huguenots in London, East Norfolk, Staffordshire, and Devonshire. The outcome will be announced in the Soule Kindred of America newsletter, which is available to members. (Memberships start at $35 per year, by the way, and provide some of the funding for this research.)
The picture shows researcher Caleb Johnson of MayflowerHistory.com describing how the project identified (and then ruled out) Soule population groups in England. If the next batch of results come back negative from Family Tree DNA, the plan is to look for donors in France and the Netherlands to follow up on the Huguenot theory, possibly Scotland.

I was out researching at the New Bedford Whaling Museum library (which is now inside the museum itself.) I did not find what I needed to clinch the Edward Doty line I was researching but did narrow down the death dates of two other ancestors, which is something.

I caught the last half hour of the SKA opening reception. Other Family Societies meeting tonight included the Pilgrim Isaac Allerton Society, the Pilgrim Peter Brown Society, the Pilgrim Hopkins Heritage Society, the Pilgrim John Howland Society, and tomorrow the Thomas Rogers Society will meet at 10 am and Soule Kindred of America will have its banquet. On Sunday at 6 the Winslow Heritage Society meets and on Monday at 6 pm the Pilgrim William White Society convenes. The Billington are still hoping to get a group going, and if you are interested, the GSMD can connect you.

This evening's Soule reception included - surprise! - George and Mary Soule. Actually it was two Plimouth Plantation employees in garb, who talked about what it's like to have that job.You may recall that the Soule cottage burned down a few years ago. It's been rebuilt and they are steering it towards the hands-on children's education model. Anecdotally, it sounds like that's a success. One child reported ran out afterwords shouting "This is better than Disneyworld!" So, this is my one photo for the day. I will try harder tomorrow.

Check back here daily starting Thursday the 6th for new photos taken each day at the GSMD's 41st General Congress (aka "the Triennial") and Soule Kindred in America's 50th anniversary activities - and at sites around MA and beyond, where I will be researching and hopefully unraveling a few mysteries. The GSMD will also be posting pictures, probably better than mine, of activities on Saturday through Tuesday, so check out their site as well. If you are a George Soule descendant, see what SKA posts over the weekend. Hopefully they will announce what was uncovered in England recently by our research team about the origins of George Soule and Mary Beckett. (They are keeping it under wraps until Saturday.) I will keep you in suspense as to exactly which research and historic sites I will be visiting; please come back and check it out. 

Sorry about the acronyms; I had to do that to make the headline fit. If you are new to this site (welcome) you may not know that the General Society of Mayflower Descendants (GSMD), aka "the Mayflower Society" in Plymouth, MA, signed a contract with the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) in Boston this year to help people looking for Mayflower pilgrim ancestry by digitizing and uploading pages from their "silver book" series that show Generation #5 descendants of each pilgrim (and in many cases Gen. 6). The 400th anniversary of the pilgrims' landing at Plymouth is looming (in 2020) and membership inquiries have already increased by a lot. The NEHGS is making the data available as they go, and as of September 4, 2017 they have completed James Chilton, Richard More, Francis Eaton, Edward Fuller, Samuel Fuller, Degory Priest, William White, Edward Winslow - all skinny volumes - and one of the 2 Gen. 5 volumes of Richard Warren and one of the 7 John Howland/Elizabeth Tilley volumes that have Gen. 5 descendants in them.

Some databases on the NEHGS site (americanancestors.org) are viewable to the public but this is one that is for members only. (If you have New England ancestry, this web site is a steal.) If you are a member, you can enter your possible ancestor's name in the Database Search box and hope a silver book entry turns up, but if your ancestor's name was a common one for the 1700s, you might go to the Database pulldown menu (just above the blue box marked "Search Tips") and select "Mayflower Families Fifth Generation Descendants, 1700-1880."

If your person does not show up, be patient. They have digitized roughly 4 shelf-inches and have another 30 to go, by my estimate. If you cannot wait that long and you live in Arizona, the state society's web site (arizonamayflowersociety.org) lists the 6 libraries to which the state organization has donated a full set of the books. Click on "membership" at the top, then select "resources." There is a downloadable list of libraries. The state Society also owns a set. If you live elsewhere, try worldcat to search for a repository near you or contact your state Mayflower society. Contact info for state, Washington D.C., Canadian, and European societies are on the GSMD web site under the "Join" heading at the top.

A word to the wise - which is YOU: Do not ever use some digitized version of a silver book that you found online. Genuine digitizations are ONLY available via the NEHGS partnership. Now and then a castoff volume, long outdated and often one of the early "work-in-progress" paperbacks, is put on the internet. They are no longer accepted because they contain inaccuracies, including disproven family legends, and they are missing whole families since proven to be descendants of your pilgrim. You may not cite these on your application. The GSMD accepts only the current version and the state Historian (who helps you with your final application) has a full set if you do not. You do not need to reprove facts already published in the silver books.(So please do not mail your state Historian photocopies of pages from these books!)