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When people sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, eventually, at one Thanksgiving or another, the topic of the first Thanksgiving will come up.
One question that is probably rarely broached, though, is, "Are we related to anyone who was at the first Thanksgiving?"
Certainly some families, probably those who have lived in the Massachusetts area for 400 years, can answer that question. They know. It’s part of family tradition.
But people move, they break off contact with other family members, and in time, the past is forgotten. Many people can’t nail down who their great-grandparents were, much less ancestors going back nine or 10 generations.
Once in a while, though, someone will get hooked on genealogy and come to the realization that they are related to people of note far in the past.
Take Shirley Ring. To most people she’s just an 83-year-old woman from the Cape Cod area. When she was 19, she married a sailor and ended up in Hicksville, Ohio. She now lives in Fort Wayne, working at the Peerless Cleaners on Maplecrest Road.
For years, that’s pretty much how she thought of herself.
Then, in 1987, her sister let her know that their father, who died when Ring was 15, was a full-blooded Wampanoag Indian. Suddenly that explained why some of her sisters had black hair and prominent cheekbones, and why one of her 11 children was born with black hair and a darker complexion.
The real surprise came, though, when Ring realized that the Wampanoag were the Indians who lived in the Cape Cod area who were invited to the first Thanksgiving 388 years ago. An Indian leader named Massasoit attended, accompanied by 90 men.
Ring, of course, can’t say for sure whether she is a direct descendant of one of those people who ate deer, fish, lobster, duck, spinach, corn and whatever else at that first feast. No one has a list of the Indians who attended. But there’s always that chance.
"I’m just learning," Ring said.
It hasn’t changed her viewpoint on Thanksgiving, though.
"It’s always been for family," and a time to be thankful for what you have, she said.
Now, though, she at least has a new topic to discuss.
The same with Gordon Smith, also of Fort Wayne.
Smith doesn’t even remember having Thanksgiving dinners when he was young. His parents, who were Salvation Army officers, ran a "home away from home" for girls – a hotel for single women working in New York City.
In 1964, though, his mother did some research and discovered they were descendants of William Bradford, a signer of the Mayflower Compact and one of the men at that first Thanksgiving.
That revelation has never affected the way Smith looks at Thanksgiving, either. He doesn’t eat venison to commemorate the feast accurately.
"I’m just thankful," Smith said. "I’m a Christian and I believe God brought the Pilgrims here and if not for the Indians they probably wouldn’t have survived. I guess I’m a little bit proud."
Then he adds, his wife is part Iroquois, and she tells him, "Don’t brag about your great-grandfather. My great-grandfather was there to greet him when he arrived."
Neither Smith nor Ring knows anyone else who is related to someone linked to that first Thanksgiving.
The Mayflower Society, though, has some numbers to ponder. The organization, which requires people to prove they are descended from a passenger on the boat, has 81,000 people who have joined and 29,000 active members.
It is known that one man on the Mayflower had 10 children, 52 grandchildren and 500 great-grandchildren, and if each of those had had only four children, that would be 2,000 great-great-grandchildren in only four generations.
An article appearing in the Mayflower Quarterly in 1978 estimated there could be as many as 145 million people who have some link to one of the original partiers.
Critics quickly disputed those numbers, with one person guessing there were only 10 million.
Nobody can say for sure, but there are a bunch of you out there related to guests at the original Thanksgiving. You just don’t know it.
