Mayflower Ancestry

I recently discovered that two of my ancestors were passengers on the Mayflower when it arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620.  These men were Francis Eaton and Samuel Fuller.  I won't summarize their genealogical information here (see links), except to say that both men died in the autumn of 1633, when an illness swept through the fledgling colony.  I am related to these two men via the great-grandfather of my maternal great-grandmother, Erline Mable Jay (1907-1997).  His name was Edward Twitchell, and he was born September 14, 1785 in Athol, Worcester Co., Massachusetts.  He was the first of this line of ancestors to leave New England, ultimately settling in Choctaw Co., Alabama, at a time when the population of the South was still in its infancy.  He died sometime between 1850 and 1860.  (He had married Sarah Williams in Washington Co., Alabama on September 10, 1826, and they went on to have at least 9 children.)

Edward's maternal grandfather, Sylvanus Eaton (1734-1791), who died when the boy was six, was born at Middleborough, in Plymouth County, and two of the latter man's great-great-grandfathers, one through his father and one through his mother, Lydia Fuller, are the Mayflower ancestors mentioned above.  This makes both men my 10th great-grandfathers.  It's noteworthy that, out of all of the other New England lines I have inherited (also through my mother), these are the only two that I have traced to the Mayflower.  The others arrived in other parts of Massachusetts beginning in the 1630s (e.g., John Whitney (1592-1673), who founded Watertown) and later (e.g., Richard Dana (1617-1690), who settled in Cambridge).

It turns out that with proper documentation descendants of Mayflower passengers may join the General Society of Mayflower Descendants!