Wrong Boat, Right Story: Cracking a Pilgrim Family Myth

 

Not all pilgrim stories wear black hats or buckle shoes. Some travel quietly through time in meeting minutes, migration maps, and a stray penciled “(Pilgrim)” on a lineage list. No dramatic claims, no grand family lore, just a quiet truth waiting patiently until the right record whispers at the right moment.

This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful not only for the bold ancestors who stood at the prow of history, but also for the gentle ones who crossed oceans in faith and humility, leaving their legacies in ink and example rather than brass and ceremony.

For years, my husband’s Williams family cherished a tale that they were descended from a Pilgrim. The “proof” sat in a letter written in the 1960s by the family matriarch, Gertrude Honaker, who wrote that Balsora Dorval had belonged to both the DAR and a Mayflower-related society.[1]

There was only one hitch: no such membership could be found. Not with the DAR, not with the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, not in early Pilgrim lineage rolls.[2] A genealogical dead-end dressed in patriotic stationery.

Balsora, the daughter of John Hicks Williams and Catherine Jarvis was born 23 April 1821, on Long Island, New York, the eldest of ten.[3] She followed her family to Lansinghburgh, Rensselaer, New York and married Edward Dorval in 1845.[4] The couple eventually made their way to Chicago and then Toulon, Stark, Illinois.[5] She died in Toulon on 22 December 1907 and is buried there.[6] She lived a solid, steady American life. But as for those lineage memberships? Silence.

Balsora Williams Dorval c. 1860

Still, I never let go of the thread. Family stories rarely spring from nothing; the facts just sometimes take the scenic route.

Then, while drafting sketches for my current genealogy project, Echoes of Brittania, I stumbled across a saved reference: The Lineages of Members of the National Society of Sons and Daughters of the Pilgrims, Vol. II. There, under membership no. 8308 for Della Ruthe Skates of Parma, Ohio, was a lineage tracing back to:

Dr. John Rodman II (Pilgrim)
(ca. 1653 – 10 Jul 1731)
m. Mary Scammon (ca. 1663 – 24 Feb 1748)

It cited Jones, Rodman Family Genealogy; History of Hocking Valley, Ohio.

And suddenly, the light came on.

Dr. Rodman wasn’t a Mayflower Pilgrim. He was a Quaker physician imprisoned in New Ross, County Wexford, Ireland for refusing to remove his hat in church.[7] He was banished to Barbadoes where he and wife Elizabeth, parentage unknown, raised their family. Two of their sons, John and Thomas, like their father was a physician; the brothers decided to relocate to Newport Rhode Island where John married second, Mary Scammon in 1682.[8] So the actual line runs: Dr. John Rodman -Thomas Rodman - Elizabeth Rodman m. Benjamin Hicks - Margaret Hicks m. Wilson Williams leading at last to the Williams family and to Balsora’s line.

When I think of Pilgrims, I think of the Mayflower voyage in 1620. I don’t picture a Quaker doctor arriving sixty-two years later by way of the Caribbean! But clearly, my definition and the definition beloved by late-1800s genealogists and patriotic club founders aren’t the same. Their scope was a bit more generous. That generosity was remembered by their great grand nieces.

So this Thanksgiving, as we’re passing around the sweet potatoes, I can finally share that I’ve solved the Pilgrim family mystery. Different ship, different year, different take on the meaning of “pilgrim.”

And here’s the delicious part: in all this, I had to laugh, because my research long ago found that the family does descend from an early Plymouth settler Robert Hicks, who arrived on the Fortune in 1621, just one year after the Mayflower.[9] Somehow, that piece drifted out of family memory while the Barbados Quaker got promoted to “Pilgrim.” It must have been the hat!

From Bards to Bard

Photo by a kind docent at Shakespeare's Home, Stratford on Avon, August 2024.

 

We had just left the library, me, exhilarated from chasing an elusive 14th-century ancestor through a nest of old parish records; him, simply relieved to stand upright again after half an hour on the bottom shelves. He’d spent the morning handing me books like a dutiful squire and now looked as though he deserved a knighthood or, at the very least, a sturdy chair. Fortunately, Shakespeare’s schoolroom promised benches and history. Two things I never resist, and one he can usually nap through.

Inside, the air smelled of beeswax and old oak, the kind of room where you half expect to hear the scratch of quills and the snap of a tutor’s patience. A man dressed in full Elizabethan regalia was lecturing with theatrical gusto about young William’s schooling. My husband settled in contentedly, no doubt counting this as his rest stop on the Tudor trail.

Then came the story of how Shakespeare’s sister once disguised herself as a boy to attend lessons beside him, the first recorded case, our costumed instructor declared, of gender-bending for the sake of education. My husband leaned over, voice low and amused, “That would be your line.”

Of course I replied , I always reply. “Yes, it would.”

The tutor froze mid-sentence, eyes narrowing like an owl’s. “Would you care to share with the class, madam?”

Reader, I was forty years too old to be scolded and four hundred years too late to be sitting in Shakespeare’s classroom yet there I was, reprimanded under the same beams that once heard Hamlet’s first drafts forming in the back of a boy’s mind. My husband, naturally, looked saintly.

As the lecture continued, I couldn’t help smiling. The old Welsh bards would have understood words have a life of their own, and some of us were simply born to answer them, even in other people’s classrooms.

After my recent AI experience that I blogged about last week, it's more important than ever to remember the power of words.

Remembering, not Celebrating, Veteran's Day

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I’ll be honest, Veterans Day is not my favorite holiday. It feels inappropriate to say “Happy Veterans Day” the same way we say Happy Thanksgiving, Happy New Year, or Happy Valentine's Day. What’s happy about it? The veteran made it through a horrible time, likely suffered PTSD, and then once a year gets a parade?

Although I am anti-war, I understand why war occurs because grown men, historically, have struggled to use their words to solve disagreements. Yet I still pause today to think about the countless past conflicts that drew ordinary, decent people into sacrifices no one should ever have to make.

This year, an article from AMAC captured that tension beautifully. “Remembering the World War I Generation This Veterans Day” reminds us that time has nearly erased the memory of those who served in the Great War, young men and women who endured unimaginable hardship, then quietly returned home to rebuild their lives.

Ironically, responses to that post weren’t about remembrance at all, but about which politician dodged which draft. That, in itself, says everything about why wars persist. We’re still fighting instead of mourning who’s lost.

Their generation is gone, but their stories are not. Some of those stories live on in the letters, journals, and memories families still hold. I was honored that my book, Thanks to the Yanks: World War I Letters from an Indiana Farm Boy to His Sweetheart, was featured in that piece. It follows one soldier’s journey from the Indiana fields to the battlefields of France and back again offering a glimpse into the humanity behind the headlines.

So today, I don’t celebrate. I remember. I think about the courage it takes not just to fight, but to return, to heal, and to live. And I’m grateful for every preserved letter and faded photograph that helps us remember those who did.

When AI Lost the Plot

 How a quiet English lineage turned into a political scandal and what it taught me about truth, technology, and trust.

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I use AI almost daily and have written and presented on it for nearly two years. But a recent experience left me completely baffled and more than a little uneasy.

I’ve been working on my final family genealogy book, this one tracing our Great Britain ancestry. My previous four books came together easily earlier this year because my notes were meticulous, my colleagues had verified my findings, and I’d been blogging about those ancestors for ten years.

Our British roots, though, are a different beast. Between my husband’s lines and mine, there are only five but they reach deep into medieval soil. Scholars can’t always agree on the pedigrees, and the repeated use of the same names has led to confusion and overlap. Sorting it all out requires patience, precision, and a love of historical detective work.

Last spring, when winter refused to obey the calendar, I drafted the outline and introduction for my new book, Echoes of Britannia. Then the season’s speaking engagements and client projects took over, and I set the manuscript aside with plans to finish it this fall.

When I returned to it in September, progress came slowly. My writing rhythm faltered, and I found myself staring at the same sentence for far too long. Grammarly could fix the punctuation, but it couldn’t fix writer’s block. My AI research assistant, Geni, usually helps bridge the gaps between genealogical sketches but apparently, he was blocked too.

We were working on the Venables of Kinderton, a noble but quiet family from Cheshire. They lived out their days peacefully, kept out of court battles, and occasionally donated a stained-glass window to a nearby abbey. In other words, wholesome and uneventful.

Until AI got involved.

My writing style isn’t the typical “Josiah begot Daniel who begot Uriah who begot…” genealogy. My family would fall asleep halfway through the second begot. They don’t like numbering systems either, even though they’re math people, not history people. Me? I’d rather run laps in PE than solve for X.

That’s why AI has been such a useful partner. Geni understands that I’m a storyteller who insists on historical truth, even when it’s messy. I like to think I’ve created a new genre: bedtime family stories with pictures for visual learners.

But one day, Geni froze mid-thought. After several failed attempts, I switched to another AI tool, Claude. I don’t use it often, but it greeted me warmly by name, which felt encouraging. I gave it a straightforward task:

“From the provided information, maintain all footnotes while making the narrative more engaging. Keep the tone conversational for readers with limited historical background.”

What came back stunned me.

The Venables, my mild, landholding, church-donating family, had been transformed into a political thriller. Claude had rewritten the story to liken them to a well-known modern politician, naming names and all. Suddenly, the Venables were misogynistic felons clawing for power.

I was horrified. I hit “thumbs down” and deleted it instantly.

A week later, I still couldn’t shake it. How could a neutral story about medieval gentry morph into a contemporary political allegory? Who gave the machine permission to do that?

My only conclusion: some AIs are now reflecting the political biases of the data they’re trained on. If their training includes modern news, it stands to reason that bias slips in and it shows.

That realization made me pause. AI is supposed to help us see patterns, not project agendas. As genealogists, we work hard to separate fact from family legend. Shouldn’t we expect the same integrity from our digital tools?

I chose not to share the story on Facebook. The last thing our country needs is another spark thrown into the bonfire of division. But I also felt this moment needed to be shared, not as outrage, but as a reminder.

We live in an era where algorithms, headlines, and echo chambers can reshape our understanding of truth. It’s up to us, researchers, writers, and everyday citizens , to hold fast to kindness, empathy, respect, honesty, and responsibility. These aren’t partisan ideals; they’re the foundation of human decency.

And as for those Venables? I’ve decided to let them rest a while. I’ll return to them soon, with fresh eyes and a renewed respect for their quiet simplicity.

Because sometimes, living a peaceful life that harms no one isn’t boring at all, it’s the truest kind of legacy.

Upcoming AI Event

Join me on Tuesday, November 4, at 2:30 pm EST when I present a beginning class on AI & Ancestry for Allen County Public Library. You can register here for free.