I've been waiting for the perfect prompt to talk about my journey and success at officially joining the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. You might think what does courting have to do with that. Well my ancestor who came over on the Mayflower was none other than Captain Myles Standish who was allegedly involved in a famous love triangle and the subject of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem the Courtship of Miles Standish. This was written about the love triangle between Pricilla Mullins, John Alden, and Miles/Myles Standish. Longfellow said that this story was true but others have said that it was more or less a tall tale. In reality Pricilla ended up marrying John Alden and Myles Standish married a woman named Barbara. I'm personally glad he married Barbra instead as it eventually lead to me!
Growing up and learning about the Mayflower one name that's most often mentioned in textbooks and the only name I remember growing up was Pricilla Mullins. My surname is Mullins and so I always thought it was interesting that a Mullins was on the Mayflower. But in getting involved with genealogy I realized that the Mullins name did not continue. She came to Plymouth with her Father William, Step Mother Alice, and Brother Joseph. Unfortunately all three of her relatives died in the first winter at Plymouth. Then she married John Alden and therefor that Mullins line ended.
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So how did I find out I was related to Captain Myles Standish. Back in 2017 I was on Ancestry one day and doing some looking around on my fathers side of the family and I think I came across my 5x great grandmother who was Elizabeth Standish Loomis. In looking at some of the hints I found something that mentioned the Mayflower. Sad to say at the time I was not familiar with Myles Standish and so a quick google search revealed who he was and his connection with the Mayflower. I was instantly intrigued and wanted to prove that I was actually related. Upon looking up info about the Mayflower I found the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. This is a society for lineal descendants of the Mayflower Pilgrims. On July 22, 2017 I submitted my proposed lineage which was the first step in joining and waited patiently to hear back.
In August of that same year I received a response and I had one spouse wrong and they had not previous lineages of my proposed line. So what that meant was that everything from me to my 5x great grandmother, Elizabeth Standish, had to be proved with documentation. I now had a plan of what I needed to accomplish and I had set the goal to have this completed by the year 2020 which was the 400th anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower.
So over the next 3 years I worked on finding everything I could to document my relationship back to Myles Standish. I poured over the internet looking for documents online and found what I could. Then what wasn't online I took to visiting courthouses and genealogy libraries looking for Marriage licenses, death certificates, and any info that would help. I would work on it awhile and then put it away for months and take a break. Then I would pick it up again always having the goal of 2020 in my mind.
Lois' grandmother was Elizabeth Standish.
At the end of 2019 I finally felt like I had enough documentation to submit my official application. Now began the real wait and boy was it hard!! With 2020 being the 400th anniversary there were many folks like me who wanted to join before the anniversary so they were backlogged quite a bit. Then as if that wasn't bad enough here came Covid-19 which shut down everything including the Mayflower society. They were still working some from home but it delayed the process even further.
But on July 6th, 2020 I received the email from my State Historian saying that my application had been approved!!!!!! A few months later my official certificate arrived in the mail. It now hangs in my dining room above my DAR certificate.
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