Religion in Family History

Two years ago I wrote a post about my Pilgrim Ancestry. In the post I wrote about my ancestor Francis Sprague who had come to Plymouth Colony on the Anne in 1623. Last year I published a post Day after Thanksgiving where I wrote about his arrival the day after the 1623 Thanksgiving.

In my Pilgrim Ancestry post I made the following statement:

At this point of my genealogical research I do not have a Mayflower ancestor. I still have branches of the family where I have brick walls and just maybe one of them will lead back to the Mayflower.

Several of those brick walls have fallen since that time.

Since last year I have found out that I have several more ancestors who lived in Plymouth Colony. My 10th Great Grandfather Roger Williams lived in Plymouth for several years and his first child was born there.

I also found out earlier this year that I have an ancestor who was a passenger on the Mayflower and signed the Mayflower Compact.

I am still researching some of the details, so will not lay out my complete descent from George Soule. I descend from his youngest daughter Patience who married John Haskell.

I know that my family members who read this post will want to know which branch of the family are descendants. One of my Row ancestors married a descendant of Patience and John, so all of you who are descendants of William Henry Hotchkiss and Pearl Edith Row are Mayflower descendants.

George Soule was listed on the Mayflower passenger list as a servant of Edward Winslow.

George was married sometime before 1627 to Mary Beckett who came to Plymouth in 1623 on the Anne.

George and Mary had nine children, five boys and four girls.

I found it interesting that in George Soule’s will he had books valued at one pound. I did a search to find out how much one pound was worth in today’s money. I found several estimates with an average of about 350 dollars. He must have had a nice little library. I also found a website that mentioned that he was a teacher to the Winslow children, but I could not find anything to back up that claim. If so he would have been one of the first teachers in New England.

I have a lot more to learn about George Soule, but am thankful that he made the choice to come to America in search of freedom of religion.

Steven

This post is part of my Religion in Family History series. Click on the link for a list of more posts in the series.