As I mentioned in my first post on this topic, I applied last Fall for preliminary review to join the General Society of Mayflower Descendants (“Mayflower Society”). According to the response to my preliminary review:

Contacting the state society of your choice as to full requirements in proceeding to membership would be the potential applicant’s next best step.  The historian of the Mayflower Society in the state where you reside will also receive a copy of this lineage review so that they will also be aware of your interest.

I’ve just filled out the Preliminary Review Form for the California Mayflower Society and put it in an envelope along with the requested self-addressed stamped envelope, so I figure I’ll get a head start on gathering and organizing the required documentation. What exactly constitutes “required documentation” is left intentionally vague in the response I received from the genealogist at the National headquarters of the Mayflower Society:

In general, an applicant will be required to prove their lineage beyond whatever point for which the Mayflower Society already has an up-to-date previously approved lineage paper on file. Usually, the best place to begin working back in order to link into an accepted lineage is with your immediate family. Full documentation, including all applicable birth, marriage and death certificates, for the most recent three generations should be assembled. When moving back beyond grandparents, documentation can be provided in the form of birth, marriage and death certificates, wills and other probate records, land records which state relationships, or, in the absence of these, published sources such as vital records of towns, town histories, published genealogies etc. Census records may also provide good corroborative evidence. There are a number of other types of records that can be used to prove descent from one generation to the next, but this is the challenge of proving a Mayflower lineage: finding these. Hopefully you already know some of this and perhaps your family has some of these documents. Once you have compiled complete documentation on your great-grandparents, clearly linking them to their parents, you will need to continue to connect each generation to the one before until you are able to tie in to the Mayflower Families book mentioned above.

In my first post on this topic, I presumed I would essentially just need to present proof of birth and marriage for each of the seven generations from Dorcas Vinton and Solomon Noble to me, for a total of 13 well-documented facts. After re-reading the letter from the genealogist at the National headquarters, I see that they’re also expecting death certificates. That doesn’t seem necessary, but it would certainly strengthen my application, so I now see that I’ll need to find 11 (or possibly 13) death certificates in addition to the 13 combined marriage and birth certificates, for a total of 24–26 facts to conclusively establish:

1. Birth of Dorcas Vinton to Seth Vinton and Polly Rider
2. ? (Death of Seth Vinton)—may have already been established by earlier researchers
3. ? (Death of Polly Rider)—may have already been established by earlier researchers
4. Marriage of Dorcas Vinton married Solomon Noble
5. Birth of Catherine Noble to Dorcas Vinton and Solomon Noble
6. Death of Dorcas Vinton
7. Death of Solomon Noble
8. Marriage of Catherine Noble married Alonzo B. Bailey
9. Birth of William Noble Bailey to Catherine Noble and Alonzo B. Bailey
10. Death of Catherine Noble
11. Death of Alonzo B. Bailey
12. Marriage of William Noble Bailey married Ellen Caroline Severson
13. Birth of Lucinda Tracey Bailey to William Noble Bailey and Ellen Caroline Severson
14. Death of William Noble Bailey
15. Death of Ellen Caroline Severson
16. Marriage of Lucinda Tracey Bailey married Frank Ross McMurry
17. Birth of Dorothy Ruth McMurry to Lucinda Tracey Bailey and Frank Ross McMurry
18. Death of Lucinda Tracey Bailey
19. Death of Frank Ross McMurry
20. Marriage of Dorothy Ruth McMurry married Vernon Cornelius Black
21. Birth of Keith Vernon Black to Dorothy Ruth McMurry and Vernon Cornelius Black
22. Death of Dorothy Ruth McMurry
23. Death of Vernon Cornelius Black
24. Marriage of Keith Vernon Black married {my mother}
25. Birth of me to Keith Vernon Black and {my mother}
26. Death of Keith Vernon Black

I’m purposely not documenting my marriage or the birth of our daughter. This way, our daughter will have at least a little puzzling and documenting to do when/if she decides to join the Mayflower Society herself someday.

So where to start? Might as well start with proofs of birth, as those do a nice job of tying generations together. I’ll start by trying to find birth certificates for the seven required individuals, and will consider alternative ways of proving birth if an individual doesn’t have a surviving birth certificate. For this particular line, I should have pretty good luck since all of the births happened within cities with developed record-keeping infrastructures.

Birth certificates

I already have a copy of my own birth certificate (somewhere…), so I just mailed off requests for the next four generations of birth certificates. I’ll have to call the Willington Town Clerk on Monday to ask about the two certificates I need to get from them.

Related Posts via Categories

• Mayflower descendancy, part 4
• Mayflower descendancy, part 3
• Mayflower descendancy, part 1
• Mayflower descendancy, part 8
• Lucinda’s DAR acceptance
• Keith Black’s early childhood (1942-1949)
• In memoriam: Keith Black (1942-2016)
• Dorothy’s tour of Olympia
• Voices from the past
• Vernon gives Richard Bearden’s backstory