there was something i had always wondered about, but couldnt
find the answer to.
just what were the dimensions of 'the mayflower'?
as a child, i pictured a HUGE ship, sort of like the galleons in
the movies. but, i think in reality it was much smaller, and
very cramped.
i cant imagine spending months cooped up with other people
in such conditions. much of that space was probably taken up
by the supplies they brought with them.
so, how big was the mayflower, and how many people
were brought with them?

22 responses total.

One of the advantages of having spent a year growing up in Boston Mass,
as a kid, is they take you one this tour of a replica of the Mayflower,
many times.  Unfortunately, since I was only 5, I may have a slightly
inflated idea of the size.

It is, indeed, a very cramped ship -- about the size of a small house,
and not nearly so well organized.  It's got very low doors & such, so
all the adults have to scrunch over to go through them, absolutely no
flat floors, everything is slanted, and there are all sorts of bumps and
things everywhere as the ships structure intrudes everywhere.  And, of
cousre, there aren't any of the "modern conveniences" we're used to.  No
rest rooms, kitchen, dining room, etc. -- one wonders how in the world
anybody could survive there for more than 3 hours without real
difficulty, let alone months on the open sea.  Especially considering
how much the real thing must have tossed and turned.  Even the replica
is a bit hard to get around in--although it's indoors it's mounted on
great swivels and rocks gently end to end.  It was evidently quite grim
-- when they got to the new world, even though they were planning to go
to Jameston, they were quite happy to get off at the very first stop and
stay right there, even though they were hundreds of miles off target and
surrounded by indians and wilderness on all sides.  102 immigrants made
the original passage, but only 50 survived the first winter.

any idea on how much space per person was alloted?

   I remember reading an account a long time ago.  It was basically enough
room to lie down on, and that was it.  Things were piled everywhere and
everyone was cramped.  I'm pretty sure this was the account where one of
the healthier people had problems with the fact that it was a blessing,
as some people died and they had a bit more room.

  The thing I've never understood about the Mayflower are the Mayflower
lineage cultists who worship the original Mayflower settlers and go through
incredible genealogical contortions to prove that they are the great-great-
great-grandniece of the first cousin of a man who was the best friend of
an illegitimate child of one of the Mayflower's crewman.  In some East Coast
circles this apparently brings prestige.  Why?

   I think perhaps because its possible to trace the history of this
country still, to a few hundred people?  I know just what you are
talking about; organizations like the DAR have always baffled me.

I don't think it's all that strange.  A lot of people like to trace their
family histories, and everone is thrilled to turn up something out of the
ordinary -- I've heard that in Australia you have a claim to status if you
can trace your ancestry to the original convicts, and in my junior high
school it was cool if you could claim Native American ancestry.  What people
choose to focus on can vary.
Of course, there may be special reasons why people want to establish their
pedigrees as WASPs, but that is a different problem.

I've an uncle who traced part of our ancestry back to the pilgrims,
although I don't think it makes much difference -- that many greats back
it's possible to have a *lot* of ancestors.  Curiously, though, it
appears all of my ancestors were here on US soil by 1800, and almost all
were of English descent.  There is a little bit of dutch (guess where
the pilgrims stayed before coming to the new world), and a little bit of
indian (while most of the indians died out and some tribes chose to
fight, others figured if you can't beat 'em join 'em.)  Excepting the
pilgrims, none of my ancestors seem to have been particularly famous.
Or infamous.  Although--my mother's maiden name is Marshall, and this
has been traced back to a certain John Marshall, first heard of about
1800.  We're not quite sure where he came from, as it turns out that
back then, if you did sufficiently bad things (bad credit cards, behind
on the alimony, etc.) what you did was you moved to a different city and
selected the name John Marshall.  I guess we'll never know if he killed
anybody or just enjoyed the anonymous notoriety.

I've never figured out if this has had anything to do with my stubborn
individualistic streak.  Probably not--the rest of my family seems to
blend in with society.  Actually, it's kind of boring--other people seem
to have much more exciting mixes of ancestry, and many seem to have
fairly close relatives living in other countries, which makes it
convenient for them to visit & so forth.

   My ancestors certainly can't be traced back to the Mayflower -- both
of my sets of grandparents were immigrants.  My mother's father's
family can trace their ancestry back to the late Middle Ages, though,
which is pretty cool, IMHO.  The book containing that part of
my family tree is just shy of an inch thick: I have relatives I've
never met all over the place. South America, Kansas, Africa,
Louisiana.  

One of my forebears was employed by Thomas Edison in his workshop.
It is also highly likely that my family is related to the Pope.

i was recently looking through a book on the settlers of
lenawee and hillsdale county (many being relatives), and
i saw a paragraph on my great ^nth grandmother, which said
she could trace her family lines to the mayflower.
gee, how nice. while some of my relatives got off the
mayflower, my others (native american) were here to greet them.
(cough cough)

I think it would be interesting to be able to trace one's family
tree back that far.  I wish I had the time to do it.

re #10 - which book. Some of my relatives (Bishop) settled in Hillsdale county.
John Bishop came over from England in 1639 and a number of his progeny ended
up in the vecinity of Washtenaw county in the mid 1800's.

i think the book was called 'hillsdale county' or something.
it is a very old book, and my mom has it back now.
i think i remember seeing some 'bishop's in there.

there was also a long list of soldiers from the civil war, who
were named, and if/where they died.

Re 12,13.  The state library in Lansing has a large collection of such books:
county histories, with a heavy emphasis on biography and genealogy.

I have looked at a history of Washtenaw county from about 1880 (and was miffed
because I couldn't find any relatives mentioned).

Re 15.  I'd suggest looking further.  A county the age and size of Washtenaw
would have something like five such histories written in different periods.
Naturally, each one concentrates on the people who were prominent in the
county at the time the history was written: an 1859 history mentions a very
different set of people than an 1885 history.

Another problem is that such books are strangely organized and rarely well
indexed.  In some cases, some do-gooder or the local historical society will
publish a comprehensive name index to this or that county history.  These
are not always shelved next to the original book in the library!

In one case I'm familiar with (a huge history of Jefferson County NY from
around 1900), portions of the book were extremely well indexed, and others
not indexed at all (this is in the original book).  Also, the book itself
had three separate indexes, appearing one after another, so that a person
who quickly opened the back to find the index might not see this.

Consider, too, that lots of last name spellings have changed since the
nineteenth century.  In my own case, my ancestors and relatives beyond my
grandmother spelled my surname "Kestnbaum"; most people named "Kestenbaum"
are not related to me, at least, not very directly.

Interesting. The correct German spelling of your name is "Kestenbaum" but
it's pronounced "Kestnbaum" (Germans swallow syllables).

Re 17.  The name isn't German, it's Yiddish.  My great-grandfather with that
surname emigrated from Hungary, not from Germany.

     Family mith has it that one of my ancestors Josiah Bartlett
was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.  I've never
taken the trouble to find out if this is true or
family pretention.

Welllll...no plans and no pictures of the Mayflower remain. There were
records in the Admiralty Court, however. A *similar* craft would be
about ninety feet long and have a 26 foot beam. Her displacement was
about 180 tons. The skipper, Chris Jones, part owner, had been in charge
of her for some 12 years previously, carrying cargo between England
and the Baltic Sea, or the Bay of Biscay. (The recent replica, now
kept afloat at the Plimouth Plantation, was at Plymouth this past summer,
when we visited there - and we went aboard. Hence this information!)
I'm learning from this item, though, that most people have a lot of
ancestors. Interesting ;->. 

Re: #11. Retirees do this a lot, Dan. You'll get your chance. My father
spent a lot of time at it, but traced primarily the "glamorous" (and
paternal!) branches, back to William, who married Sarah Brown, a 2nd
cousin of Martha Ball, in 1775. People do, of course, get a "kick" out
of these associations, even if they mean almost nothing. We named our
daughter Vittoria Sarah, for her maternal gramma, and her paternal
great^6 gramma. 
  
Re: #19. My mother was employed by Edison - but I don't think he was
my (undocumented) father. Is that what happened in your ancestry, Leslie?

I lost track of that part of my family a long time ago.  Actually,
I never knew any of them.  My father told me about the employee
of Edison, but I don't even remember this fellow's name.  My
sister might know, since she's always been more interested in
heritage than I.

I guess Wikipedia was still 10 years in the future when the original post was
made.

Thanks to WP, I found out that although the exact dimensions of the Mayflower
are unknown, it is estimated to have been about 30 m (100 ft) from stem to
stern and 7.6 m (25 ft) beam with three decks: main deck, gun deck, and cargo
hold.

The 102 passengers resided on the gun deck with an area of 15.2 x 7.6 m (50
x 25 ft). There was a crew of about 30. The master's cabin was only 3 x 2.1
m (10 x 7 ft).

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