A New Eden

Okay, so it's true that there are probably millions of descendants of the Mayflower passengers. In the first year of the settlement about half of them died, but the ones who survive were tough. And they tended to have big families. John Howland and Elizabeth Tillley had ten children, and they all had big, healthy families.

One of the amazing things about getting to know these early settlers is how extremely healthy and long-lived they were (if they survived at all), especially compared to the folks back home. From dirty, smoky, crowded cities and small tenant farms they moved to an area rich in farmland, fish, and timber, completely free of pollution. Certainly there was hunger, cold, and disease; but when they did get food it was pure and fresh. No plastic refuse clogged the streams; no nitrogen dioxide or sulfer dioxide poisoned the air. Imagine how clear the sky must have been, day and night!

The Waters Farm in Sutton, MA

These first two survivors both lived to be very old for those days. And a lot of their descendants did, too, at least the ones in my background. Amongst my grandfathers' forebears, the Waters family settled in Sutton, MA; the first Waters to arrive in Sutton, Richard, was born in 1700, and was a third-generation North American. He lived to be 87 -- which is pretty old now. His great grandfather, who lived all his life in London, died at the age of 39. The family became major apple growers, providing high-quality fruit for food -- and cider.. My grandfather said that his mother kept up the family tradition of making sure that each child always had an apple a day, for health.

These long-lived people also had very large families, eight or ten children not being unusual. So it's not really surprising that the first settlers are usually credited with literally millions of descendants. But it's still meaningful to discover that some great people are your actual blood relatives. I don't really know if it's a natural human instinct to seek a clan, or simply something our culture values. But I must say it is a great satisfaction to me to share certain forefathers with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Maude Adams, and Franklin Roosevelt! Not to mention Dr. Spock, Christopher Lloyd, and, my favorite of all -- Humphrey Bogart.

Cousin Humphrey and friend

Information about the historic Waters Farm is here:
http://www.watersfarm.com/