When we think of November we think of Thanksgiving, so here’s a Turkey Day treat for you.
As we all know, the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. Their leader, in both spiritual and temporal matters, was William Brewster, who guided them through the first two decades in the new land, including that terrible first winter when half of them died from starvation and freezing weather.
As it happens, his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson, Bill Brewster, is a member of our class.
“He wasn’t ordained, but he assumed that role,” says Bill about his ancestor, who was called Elder William by the other Pilgrims. (And that’s what Bill’s family still calls him today.) “There were two boats that left England that day, and the ordained minister, Reverend Robinson, was on the other one, the Fortune, which sprang a leak. They had to turn back to England, and the Mayflower had to go on by itself.”
Elder William got away just in the nick of time. “There was a price on his head for heresy, and the King’s men were conducting an international manhunt for him. If they had caught him, they would have burned him at the stake.”
The voyage lasted a hundred days. “It was awful. They were running out of water. They were supposed to land in Virginia and start farming to pay back the investors who had put up the money for the two boats and wanted a return on their investment. Very little is known about whether it was paid back.
“Before they could leave the boat, they had to sign the Mayflower Compact, which Elder William had written. He asked everyone to pool their resources for the good of the group. Within a year or two, having lost half their flock in the first winter, it was discovered that some people worked harder than others.
“That, plus that there were 3,000 miles of open land that they could claim (obviously, Indians were already living on the land, but they didn’t consider that) was the impetus for people to disavow the Mayflower Compact and set out on their own, which Elder William’s oldest son, Jonathan, decided to do. He managed to buy a boat for his family and sail up the Connecticut River to Norwich, where he set up a trading post.”
Last year, Bill and his son Benjamin made a pilgrimage of their own to Nottinghamshire, England, to see Elder William’s home in the tiny hamlet of Scrooby. “We also visited Sherwood Forest and saw the tree Robin Hood hid in. The Brewster manor house is still standing in very good shape. The owners are extremely nice people but very private. They had to put up an electric gate to stop people from stealing things from the property, which has happened. So if you want to go to the Brewster manor house you have to make an appointment.
“I not only managed to fulfill a dream of seeing where my direct ancestor lived, I also found the house on Cape Cod where he died. But there’s no gravesite because the Pilgrims didn’t want the Indians to know how many people had died. So I’ve gone full circle with this guy.”
Bill’s family tree is as wide as it is deep. Did you know that Angela Davis is one of his cousins? So are Bing Crosby, Katherine Hepburn, Julia Child, Pete Seeger, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ashley Judd, Nelson Rockefeller, Seth MacFarlane, Buffy Sainte-Marie, George B. McClellan, William F. “Bull” Halsey, John Lithgow, Oliver Hazard Perry, David Souter, Cokie Roberts, Elisabeth Shue, Howard Dean, Thomas Pynchon, Zachary Taylor, Ted Danson, John Foster Dulles, Kate Upton, and the greatest president Yale (or any other university) ever had, Kingman Brewster, who named his son Alden, presumably after John Alden, the man who married Priscilla Mullins in Longfellow’s poem “The Courtship of Miles Standish.”
And Bill isn’t our only Pilgrim descendant. So is Howard Dale, who descends from Richard Warren. And he has an impressive list of cousins, too, including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Orson Welles, Ernest Hemingway, Alan Shepard, Ulysses S. Grant, Henry David Thoreau, L.L. Bean, Laura Ingalls Wilder, John Cena, Glenn Ford, Taylor Swift, and Elvis. And both he and Bill are related to Richard Gere and Sarah Palin.
Interestingly, Howard and Bill roomed together in Timothy Dwight during sophomore year. And neither one of them had any inkling at the time that the other guy was also a Pilgrim descendant.
But wait! There’s more! In freshman year Bill roomed in Lawrence Hall with C.P. Howland, a member of our class who graduated with the Class of ’68. And he’s a Pilgrim descendant, too. His ancestor was John Howland, and his cousins include Humphrey Bogart, Dr. Spock, George Bush, Chevy Chase, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Cabot Lodge, “Senator Sam” Ervin, Sarah Palin (What? Her again?), Mary Chapin Carpenter, Alec Baldwin, and Phillips Brooks, the man who wrote “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
I have no doubt that we have other Pilgrim progeny among us, and if they write me, I’ll update you in a future class note.
In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving, my friends, and Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, a Cool Yule, and a Swingin’ Solstice, too. (Alas, there are no major Islamic holidays in November or December this year.) I wish all of you good health and great happiness in 2025.