Applicant for membership must be 18 years of age and show proof of descent from one of the passengers on board the Mayflower. You are eligible to join our society if you can provide documentation demonstrating that you are a direct descendant of a passenger who sailed to New England on the Mayflower in 1620. Anyone who can document their lineage showing descent from one of the 26 Mayflower passengers who left descendants is eligible to apply for membership. These passengers have known descendants:
John Alden, Isaac Allerton, John Billington, William Bradford, William Brewster, Peter Brown, James Chilton, Francis Cooke, Edward Doty, Francis Eaton, Moses Fletcher, Edward Fuller, Samuel Fuller, Stephen Hopkins, John Howland, Richard More, Williams Mullins, Degory Priest, Thomas Rogers, Henry Samson, George Soule, Myles Standish, John Tilley, Richard Warren, William White and Edward Winslow
The membership process begins by submitting a preliminary application form from the Georgia Historian, Pratt Vereen Mail Box
Complete the form, which requires only your name and your Pilgrim ancestor's name, and return it with an application fee of $100.00. You will receive a worksheet for application and instructions for continuing the process toward membership in the Society.
Annual dues for a calendar year are $35. Dues include two issues of the newsletter of the Georgia Society of Mayflower Descendants, and four issues of the Mayflower Quarterly, published by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.
Following is a preliminary application for you to fill out. You will need a proposer and a seconder who are members in good standing of the Georgia Society. If you do not know any members, we will arrange for you to meet members of the Georgia Society. Below is information about membership in the Society.
Please return the preliminary application to the Historian Pratt Vereen Mail Box
I hereby request consideration by the Membership Committee of the State Society. All of the information contained herein is true and correct.
Signed by applicant: ___________________________ Date: _______________I do not know any members in good standing but would
like to attend the next membership committee meeting [ ]
N.B. filling out the preliminary application and submitting it does not constitute any commitment of admission on the part of the Society. Admission is conditioned upon: (1) approval by the Membership Committee, (2) completion of working papers satisfactory to the State Historian (3) approval of final papers by the Historian General, (4) nomination by a proposer and seconder who are members in good standing of the Georgia Society and (5) payment of all fees.
Membership eligibility is open to all persons over eighteen years of age who are descended from a passenger on the Mayflower
on the voyage which terminated at Plymouth, New England, in December, 1620.
If you are interested in pursuing the possibility of membership in the Mayflower Society, let me suggest, as a start,
that you consult the Mayflower website https://www.themayflowersociety.org/.
They emphasize that membership begins at the
state level--the state historian can coach the interested person through the membership process, the research, collection,
and final submission of support material to the national society. However, the Society website offers one very useful service--if
you provide them with your proposed lineage, they will evaluate its authenticity and, in some cases, even provide references
to prior lineage papers that were filed on the same line which can be used to "piggyback" your application. On the main
page, further down, there is a link "Fill out our Preliminary Review Form"
https://www.themayflowersociety.org/join/preliminary-review-form
which will link to the "Preliminary Review Form." There is a fee for this service, but it is well worth it in saving the
applicant's time to research the early generations, and it puts the evaluation of the research into Plymouth's hands. In
the event they identify and recommend one or more previously qualified papers that would support your proposed lineage,
copies of those papers can be requested--of course, for an additional fee, but again, it can save many hours of research.
At that point, Plymouth notifies me that you have had a response from them. When I see what they have determined, we will
have a better idea of what documentation may be necessary to support your application. I will then send you a Mayflower
worksheet and some guidelines on what kinds of information Plymouth wants to see, and what they do not want to see. Plymouth
is interested almost exclusively in "primary" records--evidence of birth, marriages and remarriages, and death (in the
form of town or county records, or in the form of state-issued certificates), wills, deeds, property records, probates,
family Bible records, journals, letters, diaries, and so forth. They do not accept computer-generated abstracts, compilations,
excerpts, transcriptions, or website pages ("world family trees" or "family group sheets" or "marriage indexes" for example--including
ancestry.com*), and do not honor any papers filed with other lineage societies (although such DAR, SAR, Colonial Dames,
etc. membership papers may contain valuable information for locating the original documentation that supported these papers).
Censuses, published family genealogies, news articles (wedding or baptism notices, obituaries), state and local histories,
etc. are considered acceptable "secondary" sources, of use only after it has been shown that a search was made for primary
sources and such sources are not extant.
*Please note that although assertions made on various genealogy Internet sites do not constitute proof of descent, they
are not necessarily erroneous. They may indicate a valid lineage; however, such assertions must be thoroughly proven and
are not acceptable in themselves as evidence of descent.
If you'd prefer to bypass this process, please let me know and I will send you the worksheet form, the application form
to be returned to me with your application fee, and a listing of the various kinds of documentation that will create a
strong application. If you have questions or concerns in the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Mr. J. Pratt Vereen
Historian
Society of Mayflower Descendants in the State of Georgia