Pilgrims' Progress

The Mayflower replica recreated the original voyage in 2020.

 Here is a joke for you:

If April showers bring May flowers,

What do May flowers bring?

Pilgrims!

As nearly every elementary school student knows, The Mayflower was the ship that brought the Pilgrims to the New World in 1620. The story goes that once here, they met some friendly Indians who helped them survive the first winter by giving them turkey, pumpkin pie, and corn and they all started the tradition of Thanksgiving. 

Of course we all know that's not quite how it happened...

For one thing, we know they were not the first settlers of the New World. Those who settled at Roanoke and Jamestown came first. But, for whatever reasons, they didn't make it.

The Plymouth Rock Stars did, though, those dreamers who piled their hopes and prayers and whatever they could carry on to a rickety little boat and set sail from Plymouth, England in September of 1620.  A lot of people may not know that there was another boat that was supposed to sail with the Mayflower, The Speedwell, but she sprung a leak and had to stay behind for repairs. 

It's no surprise that only about half of the original 102 survived the cruise from hell that lasted 66 days -- the waves, the storms, the disease that swept through the ship -- and ended up in the wrong place. Only 53 survived that and the first winter spent still on the ship. One fell overboard and drowned.

One of those survivors was Isaac Allerton, my 10th great-grandfather. Another was his wife, Mary Norris. And their daughter, Mary Allerton, my 9th great-grandmother. Mary's future husband was Thomas Cushman, one of the Pilgrims who was stuck on The Speedwell back in England.

I may also be a descendant of Degory Priest, but I have not made that definitive connection just yet. 

Isaac Allerton was born about 1587 in England and was elected the assistant to Governor Bradford in 1621, a position he held until the 1630s when his fellows found out he was double-dealing and putting the colony in debt. 

Mary Norris was Isaac's first wife. She was about 30 when she boarded The Mayflower with Isaac and her three children Bartholomew, Remember and May. She left behind the grave of an unnamed child in Holland, where the group grouped before securing the means to set sail, and gave birth to a stillborn son while still aboard The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor.

Mary Allerton was about 4 years old when she boarded The Mayflower and, somehow, survived the two months at sea and the ensuing year. She not only survived, she procreated and would be the last of the original comers to survive. Mary married Thomas Cushman, who came to Plymouth with his father, Robert, who skipped The Speedwell and arrived on the ship Fortune in November of 1621. Robert then left little Thomas, alone, in Plymouth. Mary and Thomas had eight children and more than 50 grandchildren. Both lived to the age of 83. 

One of their children was Eleazer Cushman, born February 20, 1656 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. He married Elizabeth Coombs, who was born in Boston in 1662. They had 10 children, including Moses Cushman, who was born in 1693 in Plymouth. They had 11 children, including Abner Cushman. 

The Cushman Memorial, Plymouth Burial Hill.

Abner married Mary Frances Tillson of Plymouth and they had seven children. Two of their daughters would marry Lyons boys.

Fear Cushman, born August 6, 1749 in Halifax, Plymouth, Massachusetts, married Asahel Lyon of Plympton on October 10, 1776 in Halifax. (This Asahel is NOT the Asahel Lyon who was  killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill.) Sister Lydia Cushman married Asahel's brother, Obadiah Lyon on October 27, 1773.

Fear and Asahel, my 5th great-grandparents, had only three children -- Jessie, Eunice, and Mary (1780). 

Jessie, my fourth great grandfather, is an anomaly. My original information was that his father died young and his mother remarried and perhaps the family moved to Canada. Many genealogies for his wife Sarah Dimock (or Dimick) do not even include Jessie as a spouse. But they had at least four children: Asahel Dimock Lyon, George, Issac David, and John A. And, allegedly, Jessie lived for more than 100 years. 

Asahel, my great great great grandfather, served in the War of 1812 as a Corporal in the 11th Regiment of the U.S. Infantry under Captain V.R. Goodrich. After the war, he was given a land grant of 160 acres in DeKalb County, Illinois. He moved his family, including his wife Adeline Woodruff, from Westport, New York to Illinois in 1850.

Only one son did not make the move. My great grandfather Joseph Lucius Cincinatus Pitt Lyon chose instead to join his cousin, George Newell, to Louisiana, where he became an overseer on the Semple Plantation. 

Lucius married four times leaving three sons. John Futch Lyon, my great grandfather, married Emily LaBruyere and had 10 children, including my grandfather Druis Lyons (who somehow added the S). He married Pauline Dupre and had five children, including my father, Lionel Lyons.

And that roughly sums up the 400 years since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock and now.

For people like me who spend their late night hours and rainy afternoons doing genealogy, finding a Mayflower connection is like finding the Holy Grail. Some spend years and thousands of dollars digging up dead relatives with documentation so they can apply to The Mayflower Society and receive a lovely certificate suitable for framing. Having only found my connection a few years ago, I'm still thinking about finding the time to do the paperwork. 

For now, I'm content to just let my fellow Lyon/Lyons descendants know that we are, indeed, Mayflower descendants. Do with it what you will.