It has been 4 weeks since submitting my preliminary lineage to the Mayflower Society for review. I know the instructions said it could take 4-6 weeks to hear back from them, but I was hoping that someone was really efficient and mine would be the rare one that came back in a week. I’m impatient… and on edge.

This line from George Soule has been full of questions. Until recently, no one from this particular line could gain access to the Mayflower Society. These Ancestors were quite elusive, as well as their documents. Mayflower Society Genealogical Historian, Louise Walsh Throop, M.B.A., has been invaluable at straightening this line out. I give much gratitude for her work.

While I wait, I continue to do my own research. I want to make sure I have everything possible to verify my lineage. At first, I was told I would only need the 3 generations from me back as proof… birth, marriage, and death certificates. That is easy. Then, it was added that I needed the documents from spouses as well. Okay… mostly easy.

That is when I realized both my grandparents didn’t have a birth record. I’m not sure if they were never recorded or those years went missing from the archives. It was not compulsory in those days and if they were born at home, registering the birth might have been overlooked in a busy household. I have enough other documents showing their dates of birth that I am hoping the Mayflower Society will accept in the place of a birth certificate. *fingers crossed*

So, it all looks good. I have confidence that after submitting all my ‘proper’ documents, I will gain admittance into the Society. Then I found out that if they do not have documentation of my lineage further back, I will have to provide that. HUGE DEFLATION OF CONFIDENCE. While I know the lineage, documentation is a problem. The line in question starts in New York state, which is a dead zone for documents. They then move to primitive Canada, where early documentation was questionable, although I have them on numerous censuses. Once they moved to Michigan, the trail picks up again and I have lots of documents. Its those in-between years that is giving me fits. I will continue to search. I’d love to have those documents anyway. Keeping fingers crossed that the Society has verified the lineage and I won’t need to.

And I wait… *sound of crickets*
It would have been nice if the Ancestors had anticipated the need to verify their existence and left some sort of documentation.