Book Has 10 Thousand Mayflower Family Marriages
Records Gathered by Plymouth Colony Genealogical Scholar
Jul 29, 2009
Manuscripts left by George E. Bowman (1860-1941) amount to more than 20,000 pages of documented records. Susan E. Roser has extracted from them 10,000 marriage records.
10,000 Documented Marriages
The value of these records is that not only do they give the wedding date and name the bride and groom, but they also cite sources. This is a bonanza for family researchers who are tracing descendants of the Mayflower pilgrims who established Plymouth Colony, as well as people trying to document lineages so they can become members of The Mayflower Society.
In addition to extracting the marriage data from Bowman’s voluminous records, Roser also copied other genealogical data in her transcription.
In many cases, lines of descent from Bowman’s records are given. In addition, inter-marriage among Mayflower descendants is noted, sometimes tracing a partner’s common ancestry back to the second generation. Also noted are the names of partners who had a child together, but were not married.
Genealogist George E. Bowman
Bowman was, in 1896, founder of the Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants and served as editor of its quarterly, the Mayflower Descendant. He contributed numerous impeccably documented articles to the quarterly. Bowman was described as “the greatest genealogical scholar of Plymouth County” by Eugene Aubrey Stratton in his book, Plymouth Colony, Its History and People, 1620-1691.
This is not Roser’s only book based upon the Bowman manuscripts. She also authored Mayflower Increasings for Three Generations. (1989: Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, MD).
Book of 10,000 Marriages
That Susan Roser exerted this impressive effort to comb the Bowman manuscripts for these 10,000 marriages of people descended from the Mayflower pilgrims is a great service to those tracing Mayflower ancestry. These marriage records span more than four centuries and a separate chapter of Mayflower Marriages shows Mayflower inter-marriages through the eighth generation. For convenience in following the various lines, marriages are listed under the names of the respective Mayflower passengers and all names in the book can also be found in the index.
It has been estimated by Gary Boyd Roberts of the New England Historic Genealogical Society that there are some 30 million descendants of the Mayflower families. Even if you don't carry the surname of one of the 23 progenitors that survived that first winter, it is still possible to descend from one or more of them through ancestors that married into the Mayflower families.
Mayflower Marriages is available from online booksellers as both a 415-page paperback book or on CD. It was first published in 1990 by the Genealogical Publishing Company and has since been reprinted. It is often available from any library that has a good genealogy collection.
Source:
Review copy of Mayflower Marriages and a news release received from the Genealogical Publishing Co. in 1990.
