E. Washington family proves they descend from Mayflower folk

Published 8:33 pm Thursday, November 22, 2007

YAKIMA — Steven Arnold found the missing link in the basement of a building on the East Coast.

Acting on a hunch and information from a couple of old genealogy books, he traveled to Maine in search of records he hoped would prove that his wife’s family had descended from a Mayflower passenger.

On a handwritten property deed dated 1828, Arnold found the evidence that would allow his wife and mother-in-law to join the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.

Three months after discovering the document — and just in time for Thanksgiving — four generations of the Arnold family got their official paperwork from the society.

“It was a tear-jerker,” says 35-year-old Mellisa Arnold-Mullins, recalling how her father presented the certificates to the family at the state society’s meeting last week in Bellevue. “He went up and gave all the kids their certificates, and we got a standing ovation.”

It took the family three years of research to get there. Since Arnold was already a society member, his daughter and grandchildren would have qualified to join. But the newly established eligibility of his wife and her mother brought it all together, making it possible for four generations of the Arnold family to be inducted on the same day.

“I’m still excited about it,” says Arnold, 56, recording secretary of the state society and treasurer for the Margaret Hyre Mid-Columbia Colony of the Society of Mayflower Descendants.

Documentation is required to join the society, which was founded in 1897 to bring people together to celebrate their common heritage and carry on the memory of their ancestors. Today, there are more than 26,000 members — including about 450 in Washington state.

Membership makes up less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the United States’ approximately 290 million people. But it’s estimated that 35 million Americans could be descended from Mayflower passengers.

Descendants now officially include 77-year-old Virginia Markham, Arnold’s mother-in-law; 55-year-old Judith Arnold, his wife; their daughter, Arnold-Mullins; and their grandchildren, 16-year-old Jessica Bacon, 14-year-old Jennifer Bacon and 6-year-old J.T. Mullins. They are 12 to 15 generations removed from Mayflower passenger Richard Warren.

To many descendants, it’s a wonder that any of the 102 Mayflower passengers survived the 1620 voyage. After the harsh, two-month journey from Leyden, Holland, they were cold, hungry and far from the familiar. Nearly half of them died before spring. Survivors celebrated with a three-day feast of thanksgiving, now commemorated as a national holiday.

Their Plymouth colony eventually became the second successful English settlement in the New World.

Arnold is a descendent of Mayflower passenger John Howland, who fell overboard during the voyage, but managed to climb back into the vessel and who eventually married Elizabeth Tilley, another passenger.

Through his research, Arnold had a hunch his wife also descended from a passenger. But he only got so far on the family tree before getting stuck on a limb.

He knew his wife was related to an 18th-century woman by the name of Leah Locke. It took years of research and a cross-country trip, but Arnold eventually proved that Locke was a descendant of Mayflower passenger Richard Warren.

“In order to prove this line, we had to prove Leah Locke was the right Leah Locke,” says Arnold, who found proof in Portland, Maine, during an eight-day visit to New England in August.

During the vacation, he and his family attended reunions of Howland and Warren descendants, visited the Howland homestead and spent hundreds of dollars copying records, including the property deed that established the link.

Finding the deed marked another milestone: It’s uncommon in Western states — except maybe California, which has more than 2,700 Mayflower Society members — to have both a husband and wife descended from the ship’s passengers.

And, it’s less common in Eastern Washington, where there are only about 70 members, says Seattle’s Don Wingerson, immediate past governor of the state society and its current corresponding secretary.

Finding Leah Locke isn’t the end of the line for Arnold, who’s continuing his research. His next project: tracing ancestors of his grandson J.T. to the first successful English settlement in what was to become the United States — Jamestown, Va., founded in 1607.

“My database has 85,000 people in it now, and they’re all relatives,” he says. “It never ends. That’s why it’s fun. You’re always finding something new.”

In the meantime, his discovery could open the door for other descendants. Proving the Leah Locke line “absolutely makes it easier” for others tracing their ancestry, says Ann Lainhart, historian general at the society’s Plymouth, Mass., headquarters.

“Obviously, (the Arnold family’s) done some good work,” she says. “And, hopefully, we’ll have more people through Leah.”