Linda Jo Scott writes in the Battle Creek Enquirer (Battle Creek, Michigan), about what it takes to join and be certified by The Mayflower Society. The Mayflower Society is a genealogy society dedicated to descendants of those Pilgrims that sailed across the Atlantic on the Mayflower. It’s not quite as simple as sending in some fees and a copy of your family tree.
Candice Whitney of Bellevue is one of millions of Mayflower descendants in this country.
But unlike most who claim Mayflower ancestry, Miller, 53, now has papers to prove she is a 14th-generation descendant of John Tilley and his wife, Joan Hurst Rogers, two English people who, with 100 others, sailed to America on the Mayflower in 1620.
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In order to become a member of the Massachusetts-based Mayflower Society, Whitney had to provide extensive documentation, including formal birth, marriage and death certificates — or other approved documentation — tracing her family tree to one of 26 Mayflower Pilgrims.