American Ancestors (Spring 2018) Special Edition: Mayflower 400th Anniversary Guide

The Spring edition of American Ancestors, the periodical of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS), was published earlier this week. It provides a guide to the Mayflower 400th Anniversary, which takes place in 2020. The English ship Mayflower arrived in what is today known as Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620 with 102 passengers (know today as «the Pilgrims») and a crew of about 30 people.

The 68 pages special edition is packed with information on various events taking place during the anniversary year and articles covering different aspects of Mayflower history, including Notable Mayflower Descendants. A List of 100, with sources by Gary Boyd Roberts. On the list one can find several presidents and first ladies, including Franklin D. Roosevelt and Barbara Pierce Bush, author Laura Ingalls Wilder, actors Clint Eastwood and Henry Fonda as well as Mormon founder Joseph Smith, to mention a few. The contents can be read here. There is so much history to explore, so I look forward to reading the edition in full.

 Photo: © 2016 Dag Trygsland Hoelseth.

Mayflower II, a copy of the original ship. It was built in 1957 and is currently under renovation. The photo was taken during my visit to Plymouth in 2016.

Presidential genealogy in the latest issue of American Ancestors

In the latest issue of American Ancestors, one of the two periodicals of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, there is an interesting article titled The Ancestry of President Donald John Trump. An Initial Exploration, written by Alexander Bannerman, Julie Helen Otto and Gary Boyd Roberts.

Gary Boyd Roberts is Senior Research Scholar Emeritus at NEHGS and is well-known for his book Ancestry of American Presidents, which was printed in 2009 and reprinted with corrections in 2012 (ISBN 978-88082-220-6), and which I (of course!) have a copy of. Julie Helen Otto, a former Staff Genealogist at NEHGS, is currently responsible of indexing the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (shortened to The Register) and serves as transcriber for Mayflower Descendants (which is not included in the membership subscription to NEHGS).

Alexander Bannerman is the editor of the periodical Executive Papers, which is the journal of The Hereditary Order of the Families of the Presidents and First Ladies. An ancestor table for Trump will appear in issue 14 of Executive Papers. The said table will be more detailed than the one published in American Ancestors. The Trump family can be traced to Kallstadt in Germany, while the president's mother was born at the Isle of Lewis in Outer Hebrides in Scotland. Some genealogical information about the president has been published on various webpages, including ThoughtCo.com.

According to the Icelandic genealogist Oddur F. Helgason, Trump is a descendant (of among others) the Norwegian King Håkon V Magnusson, cf. Iceland Monitor 24 Janyar 2017, but I would like to see more details of his sources before making further comments.

Parts of the latest issue deal with early Cape Cod ancestry, as demonstrated on the front cover. Besides the Trump article, I also found the article Bringing the Armenian Genocide to Light by Ann Goolkasian O'Donnell to be particularly interesting.