The First Families of America: No Blue Bloods on the Mayflower (Part 1)

Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry writes about the working-class background of the Mayflower Pilgrims- and the Blue Bloods of Boston. Melissa is a genealogist who has a blog, AnceStory Archives, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.

In 1958 social historian Cleveland Amory wrote an commodity in the Boston American newspaper on America’s “first families” and how they forced national societies haloes of his date. Amory wanted to clear the error historians nurtured about the Mayflower Pilgrims, who arrived in the New world in 1620.

Boston American( Boston, Massachusetts ), 28 September 1958, sheet 9

For example, one American historian, Dixon Wecter, grouped Mayflower passengers as “the ne’er-do-wells, underprivileged, and maladjusted.” He clumped them in with Jamestown( First Class of Virginia) and Knickerbocker New Yorkers.

Amory asserted that Wecter and other historians “…have gone too far. They is not simply fail to do justice to the Pilgrims who were, as working group, perhaps the greatest of all this country’s heroes, ” he pointed out that a great many recognise American citizens are Mayflower-descended 😛 TAGEND

“…including, to take a random selection, Boston’s Adams family, Ulysses S. Grant, the first Mrs. Jefferson Davis[ Sarah Knox Taylor ], Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson[ Lidian Jackson Emerson ], William Howard Taft, J. P. Morgan, George F. Baker, the first Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr.( Abby Aldrich ), and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”

Illustration: “Mayflower” descendant Sarah Knox Taylor Davis( 1814 -1 835 ), wife of Jefferson Davis( 1808-1889 ), and the daughter of the 12 th U.S. President Zachary Taylor( 1784 -1 850) and Margaret “Peggy” Mackall Smith( 1788 -1 852 ). Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

It was not just the historians who looked down on “the other” first family lines. The Boston elite, whose ancestors came over on the Arabella( flagship of the Winthrop Fleet that arrived in Salem in 1630) claimed it introduced the country’s firstly Whitney and distinguished forebearer Sir Richard Saltonstall. These blood lines boasted of ten unbroken generations of Harvard men and their socially prestigious ladies.

Photo: Isabella Stewart Gardner( 1840 -1 924)( left) and her mother Adeline Smith Stewart( 1814 -1 886 ), married to William Stewart. Adeline is a direct heir of Elder John Strong who came on the “Hopewell”( Winthrop Fleet ). Credit: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

Amory himself was multiplied from Brahmin stock. His pedigree consisted of a compose of Harvard grads and famous colonial gals, with appoints such as Copley, Coffin, Appleton, and Peabody. I concluded various paintings of his predecessors.

Illustration: portraits of Cleveland Amory’s ancestors painted by Joseph Blackburn: Richard Fisher Amory( 1722 -1 784 ), lad of Thomas Amory( 1682 -1 728) and Rebecca Holmes( 1701 -1 770 ); and his wife Elizabeth Coffin( 1743 -1 823 ), daughter of William Coffin( 1669 -1 775) and Ann Holmes( 1669 -1 774 ). Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Despite his high position on the social ladder, Amory did not put on airs- preferably, he loved to play and pun at the upper echelon, peculiarly its grande dames.

He invoked two of them in the Boston American article. Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis( Eliza Ann Wetherby ), who was asked if she was condescended from the Mayflower, replied: “Oh no, we came on the second boat. We transmitted our servants on that.” Mrs. Jack Gardner( Isabella Stewart Gardner) settled a tourist in their arrange when they launched into a family history that included the Mayflower. She answered: “Indeed, I understand the immigration laws are much stricter nowadays.”

More can be found in Armory’s book The Proper Bostonians( 1947 ).

The first families of Boston not only missed the Mayflower, they initially determined not in Boston but in Salem- where, as the saying was, “its Peabody or nobody.” Amory shook a few family trees, excavate below the upper crust, and learnt not one “Gent” to be among the Pilgrim group. Yes, the Mayflower brought the first commoners, and the 41 men who ratified the famous pact were working men who came to the New World to create a social order that represented “equality of all men.”

Ruthie Stearns of Lincoln, Nebraska, joined the Mayflower Society a few years back. She descends from fares Richard Warren, Francis Cooke, and John Alden. Ruthie shared some of their own families photos which will appear in the second part of this story. I experienced a Plimoth Plantation “Ye Olde Wedding” reenactment of Ruthie’s direct Mayflower line featured in the Boston Herald.

Boston Herald( Boston, Massachusetts ), 11 July 1986, page 31

The happy couple: Robert Bartlett and Mary Warren. In the 1627 hamlet, Captain Standish Miles presided the ceremony at his house and the bride’s parents, Richard and Elizabeth( Walker) Warren, hosted the “bride ale, ” the Pilgrim’s version of a bridal feast. The top of the “Who’s Who” list of attendees was John and Elizabeth( Tilley) Howland. The couple accompanied through the little village to spread their good news with residents and visitors alike.

Cleveland Amory abused his pencil to uncover the snobberies of upper-crust society, but harboured another passion which is prevalent among WASP and Mayflower words: Animal Liberties. According to beginnings, Amory’s adore for animals was strengthened by his Aunt Lucy “Lu” Claredon Creshore( 1871 -1 955) of Beacon Hill, who harbored more stray animals than the Beales of Gray Gardens. And for that, Amory is on my “Who’s Who” list of those who loved all beasts great and small.

Stay sung: in my next essay, Amory probes Pilgrim tenancies and interviews Mayflower progenies, and I’ll have more personas from culture representative Ruthie Stearns- whose gr. grandfather did carpentry work at Moldenke Castle in New Jersey!

Further Reading 😛 TAGEND

Amory, Cleveland. The Proper Bostonians, 1947 Back Bay Houses: 155 Beacon Caleb Johnson’s MayflowerHistory.com: Famous Mayflower Descendants

Genealogy 😛 TAGEND

Ruth Stearns——-Richard Warren 😛 TAGEND

Richard Warren( 1578 -1 628) and Elizabeth Walker( 1583 -1 673) Elizabeth Warren( 1615 -1 669) and Richard Church( 1608 -1 668) Joseph Church( 1638 -1 710) and Mary Tucker( 1640 -1 710) Abigail Church( 1680 -1 720) and William Simmons( 1672 -1 765 ), son of John Simons( 1646 -1 715) and Mercie Peabodie( 1649 -1 728 ), daughter of William Peabodie( 1620 -1 707) and Elizabeth Alden( 1625 -1 717) Peleg Simmons( 1716 -1 807) and Mary Brownell( 1717 -1 799) Abigail Simmons( 1760 -1 819) and William Sanford( 1757 -1 837) Prudence Sanford( 1783 -1 858) and Charles Peckham( 1775 -1 859 ), lad of George Peckham( 1720 -1 810) and Jerusha Bartlett( 1735 -1 791 ), daughter of John Bartlett( 1696 -1 773 ), lad of Robert Bartlett( 1663 -1 718) and Sarah Cooke( 1671 -1 745 ), daughter of Jacob Cooke, son of Francis Cooke. Robert Bartlett( 1663 -1 718 ), son of Joseph Bartlett( 1639 -1 711 ), lad of Robert Bartlett( 1603 -1 676) and Mary Warren( 1609 -1 683 ), daughter of Richard Warren( Charles Peckham connects to Francis Cooke and Richard Warren through daughter Mary Warren) Abigail Peckham( 1800 -1 853) and Curtis Bacon( 1799 -1 882) Harriet Bacon( 1827 -1 889) and Jonathan Hazzard( 1820 -1 895 ), son of Tom “Pistol Head” Hazard*( 1787 -1 846) and Ruth Carpenter( 1789 -1 860 ); Thomas Hazard( 1756 -1 845) and Hannah Knowles( 1764 -1 818) Russell Fremont Hazard( 1858 -1 930) and Ella Hildreth Sayre( 1857 -1 904) Genevieve Sayre Hazard( 1891 -1 979) and Charles Elmer Holmes( 1889 -1 973) Barbara Dorcas Holmes( 1927 -1 992) and Howard Oliver Stearns( 1925 -1 999 ); child Ruth Ellen Stearns( b. 1953)

* From Thomas B. Hazard “Nailer Tom’s diary.” Son Thomas( Pistol-Head Tom) must have been a constant concern to “his fathers”. A bizarre record in the Diary reads: “Feb. 16, 1814. I am informed that son Thomas was married to Ruth Carpenter yesterday by Enoch Stidman.” The twenty-eighth of the same month, “Son Benjamin and Joanna Carr laid their intenshons of wedlock before the engagement, ” and May 12 they were duly married in Hopkinton, where the bride lived, with Nailer Tom lodging at Sarah Carr’s house. Two days later “Son Benjamin produced residence his wife” and the next day they all dined at Rowland Hazard’s, Son Benjamin and his wife, and Son Thomas and his wife. A real wedding party it must have been. They all stood to tea, except Son Thomas and his wife, making a day of it. The next day they were all together at Nailer Tom’s, and one can fancy the festivities; but the enthusiasm must have been too much for Pistol-Head Tom, for that same week his father “Went to see Son Thomas, he had one fit while I was there.”

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