THE PILGRIM'S MAYFLOWER FINALLY MAKES LANDFALL IN MAGNOLIA

My  son  Josh  was  born  in  October,  1983.     In  the  Spring  of  1984,  we  drove  him  over  to  the  Glenolden,  Pennsylvania  home  of  Anna  Maria  Kearney  Eitelman,    my  last  living  grandparent,    so  that  she  could  see  her  great  grandchild,  and  so  that  we  could  photograph  our  son  in  his  great  grandmother's  arms.

As  we  went  back  out  to  our  car,   Grandmom's  last  words  to  me,  before  she  died  a  few  months  later,   were,  "PETE,  REMEMBER  TO  LOOK  FOR   THE  SEARS  GENEALOGY."

I  didn't  forget  it.     I  finally  found  it,  in  2002.  And  what  it  revealed  was  astonishing ...

Peter  J.  Dawson,  son  of

my  mother  Eleanore  Ann  Eitelman,  daughter  of

my  gf  Edward  Decatur  Eitelman,  son  of

my  g1  gm  May  Katherine  Pitman,    daughter  of

my  g2  gm  Susan  E.  Sears  Sorrell,  daughter  of

my  g3  gf  Philo  Sears,   son  of

my  g4  gf  Edward  Sears,    son  of

my  g5  gf  Alden  Sears,   son  of

my  g6  gm  Mary  Paddock,   daughter  of

my  g7  gm  Alice  Alden,  daughter  of

my  g8  gf  David  Alden,  son  of ...

one  of  the  most  famous  married  couples  in   the  history  of  the  world,   my  g9  gp's,  John   Alden ...

... who  was  the  cooper,  or  barrel-maker,  on  board  the  Mayflower ...

... as  well  as  a  signer  of  the  Mayflower  Compact,  and  Priscilla  Mullins ...

... who  with  her  parents  my  g10  gp's  William  Mullins  --  another  signer  of  the  Mayflower  Compact  --  and  Alice  Atwood  sailed  on  board  the  Mayflower   with  John  Alden,  landing  at  Plymouth  Rock  in  1620.

I  and  my  sons  are  pretty  special,  right?   (And  we  didn't  even  have  to  do  anything !!!)

Not  so  fast,  there,  Petey!

It  turns  out  that  approximately   40  million  --  or  12%  --  of  Americans   are  directly  descended  from  one  of  the  Mayflower's   passengers.

What ???!!!   How  could  that  be ???!!!

Well,  it  turns  out  that  as  people  marry  and  reproduce,   and  (until  the  coming  of  The  Pill)    have  an  average  of  more  than  2  children  who  succeed  in  achieving  reproductive  age  and   in  having  children,  themselves,    they  produce  a  kind  of  "descendancy  cone"  --   an  ever-vaster   number  of  direct  descendants...

... made  of  people  who  meet  and  marry   the  descendants  of  people  in  their  own  or  in  other  "descendancy  cones,"  so  that,  when  a  non-Mayflower  descendancy  cone  person  meets   and  mates  with  a  Mayflower  descendancy  cone  person,   and  so  have  children  together,     the  people  in  those  non-Mayflower   "descendancy  cones"   start  having  Mayflower  descendants!

Presto  chango,  there's  a  12%  chance  in  America  that  you  or  your  living  children  are  in  part  the  products  of  the  combined   Mayflower  "descendancy  cones"  --  that  you  and  they  are  Mayflower  descendants!

So,  it  turns  out  that  I'm  not  so  "special"   --   that  I  have  a  lot  of  competition  in  America,  and  probably  in  little  Magnolia,  too.

Maybe  even  (God  forbid!)  among  some  of  the  Democrats!

It  turned-out  that  I  and  my  descendants  are  also  offspring   of  a  second  Mayflower  line,   that  of  Thomas  Rogers,  also  a  signer  of  the  famous  Mayflower  Compact.