Maybe you are a Yankee!
Do you think you may be a “Mayflower Descendant”? Marilyn Monroe and Orson Welles were direct descendants of the Pilgrims John and Priscilla Alden. Even British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was a Mayflower descendant on his mother’s side – she was an American.
Does your family lore mention old New England towns or ship that arrived in the New World in the 1600s? Do you have a family tree from the family bible or from Ancestry.com that has references to Massachusetts towns?
It will surprise you that the early English settlers who arrived here are pretty well documented as to where they disembarked, names and birthdates of family members, property descriptions on deeds at courthouses, marriage and death records, and graveyard burial plots are often well-documented as well.
The best land in New England was almost all spoken for by 1680, and new arrivals often stuck around just long enough to gather supplies and money so that they could head west in search of land for themselves. But, here in New England, you can find the American roots of your family, and we can take you to the towns, churches, local historical societies, and seaports where your family began in America.
We recently took and elderly woman on a tour to track down her family roots (they were named Kimball), and we located for her 3 houses, all built in the early 1600s and all still private residences. We were able to talk our way into 2 of them, and visited a historic old graveyard which had more than 100 Kimball family tombstones, as well as a memorial stone, honoring the first Kimball to arrive in the New World. Later, we had a Mayflower Descendent named Cushman, we located the family name on the Fore Father’s monument, family gravestones and at the Plymouth Historical Society we found a book all about their ancestor.
We can also gain access to locked-up, old colonial-era graveyards, create indoor house tours, and contact small-town historical societies for personal tours. The New England Genealogical Society on Newbury Street in Boston can also help you with your ancestor search as well.
