Who knew . . . but is it true? (December 17, 2016) : The Mayflower; Benjamin Church; King Phillip's War; Anawan Rock; and Me??

Several years ago I was finally able to complete the research and documentation necessary to prove the family lore that held we were Mayflower descendants through my mother's line. The problem had been that while my maternal grandmother maintained that we were descended from Richard Warren of the Mayflower, I was never clear about whether it was through her Cooke line or through the line of her husband, my grandfather Everett Carpenter. [I have blogged previously about how I finally had the "Eureka Moment" when all the pieces of the centuries-old puzzle fell into place and I was accepted by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. You can see that post from May 23, 2013 here.] As it happens, there are actually two known lines of descent from Richard Warren to me and they both pass through my mother's mother and her Cooke line. 

Tracing in reverse order one of the meandering lines of connection from me to Richard Warren, the path eventually comes to the marriage of Richard Warren's fourth daughter Elizabeth Warren (1616 - 1669) to one Richard Church (1608 - 1668). Richard and Elizabeth Church are my 9th great grandparents.

               Me 

               Shirley Carpenter m. Arnold G. Tew, Jr.

               Ruth Eaton Cooke (1897 - 1979) m. Everett Shearman Carpenter (1891 - 1962)

               Walter W. Cooke (1869 - 1944) m. Florence L. Flagg (1870 - 1904)

               George H. Cooke (1843 - 1872) m. Susannah C. Appell (1844 - 1906)

               Russell Cook (1810 - 1884) m. Mary Vinal Otis (1806 - 1881)

               Benjamin Cook (1768 - 1846) m. Abigail Church (1771 - 1845)

               Ebenezer Church (1726 - 1825) m. Hannah Wood (1734 - 1815)

               Caleb Church (1701 - 1769) m. Deborah Woolworth (1703 - 1733)

               Joseph Church Jr. (1663 - 1715) m. Grace Shaw (1666 - 1737)

               Joseph Church Sr. (1637 - 1711) m. Mary Tucker (1641 - 1710)

               Richard Church (1608 - 1668) m. Elizabeth Warren* (1616 - 1669) 

               * Elizabeth Warren was the fourth child and fourth daughter of 

                     Richard Warren and Elizabeth Walker, his wife.

               

Elizabeth Warren and Richard Church had at least ten children according to the Mayflower Families series. The second son of Elizabeth and Richard Church was Benjamin Church (1639 - 1718), the immediate younger brother and sibling of my 8th great grandfather, Joseph Church Sr.

Benjamin Church is my 9th great uncle. He was a very interesting character and Nathaniel Philbrick, author of Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (New York: Penguin Group, 2006), devotes considerable space in his book to the person and character of Benjamin Church. According to Mr. Philbrick, Benjamin was a thirty-three-year-old carpenter who became "the first Englishman to settle in the southeastern tip of Narragansett Bay at a place called Sakonnet [Little Compton, Rhode Island today], home to the female sachem Awashonks and several hundred of her people." Benjamin was a man who wanted to create his own home from scratch out of what was then wilderness in Indian territory. As Philbrick put it, "Church was a throwback to his maternal grandfather, Mayflower passenger Richard Warren. By Moving to Sakonnet, he was leaving his past behind and beginning anew in Indian country." (Mayflower, p. 233)

It took Benjamin Church little time to realize that his dream of establishing a home at Sakonnet for himself, his wife Alice Southworth, and their two-year-old son Thomas (who were left behind in Duxbury) depended on establishing a good relationship, if not a friendship, with the sachem Awashonks. In time he succeeded in establishing such a friendship with Awashonks that at some point in June 1675 she warned Church that Metacomet, the second son of Massasoit of the Wampanoag's (by then known by his adopted English name of Phillip), was about to start a war with the English colonists. Philip wanted her Sakonnets to join him, and Awashonks wanted Church's advice first. Church advised that she and her people look to Plymouth Colony for protection and promised her he would go to Plymouth to warn the governor and return with instructions. Before he could do so, the predicted war broke out and eventually spread throughout New England. The war -- known today as "King Philip's War -- lasted from 1675 to 1678. More than half of New England towns were at one time or another attacked by Native American warriors and in southern New England more than 1,000 colonists and 3,000 Native Americans were dead.

Benjamin Church became a captain for the first Ranger [1] force in America in 1676 when he was commissioned by Josiah Winslow, the Governor of Plymouth Colony, to form a ranger company during King Philip's War. He was one of the principal leaders among the settlers. Today he is considered the "Father of American Rangers." [See, "United States Army Rangers" at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Rangers#Colonial_period] Church played an active and leading role in the war that Philbrick (Mayflower, p. 357) summarizes as follows . . . 

               [N]o matter how desperately our nation's mythologizers might wish

               it had never happened, King Philip's War will not go away. The

               fourteen bloody months between June 1675 and August 1676 had a

               vast, disturbing impact on the development of New England and,

               with it, all of America.

On August 12, 1676, Church's company of rangers conducted an operation that resulted in the killing of King Philip by one of Captain Benjamin Church's allies -- a Native American named John Alderman. Philip's body was "then butchered in a manner standard with English punishment for treason."[2] The body was drawn and quartered. The war effectively ended soon after the death of King Philip though skirmishes continued in far northern New England into 1678. In the greater part of the war theater in southern New England, the war ended on August 28, 1676 when Captain Benjamin Church succeeded in capturing one of King Philip's chief captains, Anawan, the war chief of the Pocasset people at the site of what is now known as "Anawan Rock" in Rehoboth, Massachusetts. Philbrick tells the full story of the capture of Anawan in Mayflower at pages 338 - 344 and it does not end well for Anawan for he was beheaded while Church was away discussing the possibility of his taking a company to Maine to assist in hostilities against the Abenakis. Church had hoped to turn Anawan to his side as an ally in the fight against the Abenakis, but that was not to be.

Philbrick's closing words about Benjamin Church are as follows (Mayflower, 357-58) . . .

               Out of the annealing flame of one of the most horrendous wars ever fought

               in North America, [Church] forged an identity that was part Pilgrim, part

               mariner, part Indian, and altogether his own. That so many characters 

               from American history and literature resemble him -- from Daniel Boone to

               Davy Crockett to Natty Bumppo to Rambo -- does nothing to diminish the

               stunning originality of the persona he creates in [his] Entertaining Passages

               Relating to Philip's War. That Church according to Church is too brave, too

               cunning, and too good to be true is beside the point. America was destined

               to become a nation of self-fashioned and self-promoting men. What makes

               his story so special, I believe, is that he shows us how the nightmare of

               wilderness warfare might one day give rise to a society that promises liberty

               and justice for all.

*     *     *

There is another interesting line of descent that passes through my mother to me, but this one comes via my mother's father, Everett S. Carpenter. Tracing this somewhat less meandering line of descent to a 4th great grandmother and her father and grandfather onto the farm they owned at the time of the American Revolution, the line is as follows . . .

               Me 

               Shirley Carpenter m. Arnold G. Tew, Jr.

               Everett Shearman Carpenter (1891 - 1962) m. Ruth Eaton Cooke (1897 - 1979) 

               Samuel Eber Carpenter (1853 - 1929) m. Sarah Etta Freeman (1858 - 1945)

               Samuel Carpenter (1828 - 1904) m. Ruth Ann Miller (1828 - 1893)

               Joseph Carpenter (1789 - 1880) m. Nancy Mason Bullock (1793 - 1880)

               James Carpenter (1767 - 1812) m. Lucy Bliss (1769 - 1817) -- my 4th great

                    grandmother

               Jonathan Bliss (1739 - 1800) m. Lydia Wheeler (1737 - 1803)

               Ephraim Bliss (1699 - 1778) m. Rachel Carpenter (1699 - 1784) -- my 6th great

                    grandparents

As the descent line above indicates, Ephraim and Rachel Bliss had a son named Jonathan who married Lydia Wheeler. One of the numerous children of Jonathan and Lydia Bliss was Lucy Bliss who married James Carpenter in Rehoboth, Massachusetts on March 6, 1789. Their son Joseph Carpenter married Nancy Mason Bullock and they had 14 children, one of whom was my great great grandfather Samuel Carpenter. Another of their children was Lucy Bliss Carpenter who was named after Joseph's mother Lucy Bliss. Lucy Bliss Carpenter (my 3rd great aunt) married Everett Leprilete Sweet on March 6, 1851.

I posted recently about Lucy Bliss [Carpenter] Sweet and the written Memorial to her compiled by Mrs George St. John Sheffield sometime after Lucy's death on December 13, 1910.  A copy of the Memorial was kindly provided to me recently by my 4th cousin, Neysa [Carpenter] Garrett.  [See, my post of December 13, 2016 here.] It was a portion of the Memorial to Lucy that provided the inspiration for some research that led to this post of previously undiscovered historical connections in my genealogy . . . as will now be revealed below.

On page 2 of the Memorial to Lucy Bliss [Carpenter] Sweet, her lineage to the Bliss family of Rehoboth was summarized and the fact that she got her name from her grandmother, Lucy Bliss, was explained. In the summary of Lucy Sweet's Bliss lineage, it was stated that Lucy's grandmother, Lucy Bliss, was the daughter of Captain Jonathan Bliss; and, in turn, Lucy Bliss [Carpenter] Sweet was the great great granddaughter of Lieut. Ephraim Bliss -- both Jonathan and Ephraim served during the "War of the Revolution."

Most of this Bliss connection through my Carpenter line was previously known to me, but it was the following passages from page 2 of the Memorial (shown and highlighted below) that really caught my attention . . . 

               [Lucy Bliss] was the granddaughter of Lieut. Ephraim Bliss, who, when the

               War of the Revolution broke out, "though seventy-five years old, shouldered

               his musket, and with his two married sons," -- one of them Captain Jonathan

               Bliss, the father of Lucy, -- "marched away, and joined the Continental Army."

               After a year, [Ephraim] was compelled to return home, but a grandson took his place

               to keep the family number intact. His own services were not ended, however,

               for, one day, when working in a distant field, he heard the note of danger sounded

               from the horn always kept on the bench beside the kitchen door, and, leaving his

               plough in the furrow he hastened on his horse to the house, to learn that a 

               messenger had brought news that the enemy were burning a nearby town . . . At

               once [his saddle bags] were thrown over the horse . . . and the horse was turned

               toward the enemy. *  *  * On this Bliss farm was the celebrated Annawan Rock,

               around which cluster Indian legends. It was the lodge of the chieftain of that name,

               who was under-chieftain to the famous King Philip, and the story of his capture is

               one of the thrilling tales of Philip's War. This romantic spot, -- the rock and some land

               surrounding it, -- was deeded to the Antiquarian Society of Rehoboth, by a

               descendant of Lieut. Bliss, "after it had been in the family over two hundred years."  

Who knew that there was a historical and genealogical connection between my Cooke/Church line through my maternal grandmother and my Carpenter/Bliss line through my maternal grandfather . . . and that it involved the famous Anawan Rock in Rehoboth, Massachusetts too? The only thing that  remains is definite proof of the Bliss ownership of a farm that once included the land on which Anawan Rock sits and its transfer by deed to the Antiquarian Society of Rehoboth.

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[1]   Rangers were men who were hired by colonial governments on a full-time basis to do reconnaissance and to patrol the boundaries of the colonies to provide early warning of troubles.

[2]  See, Wikipedia, "Benjamin Church (ranger)," https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Church_(ranger)

Photograph of the Mayflower II underway from WikiTree at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:The_Mayflower

The image of an engraving of Benjamin Church from a 19th Century edition of his narrative, Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip's War, is from the author's copy of Nathaniel Philbrick's book Mayflower (p. 234).

The image of Captain Benjamin Church by unknown artist circa 1675 -- New York Public Library,  Stephen Schwarzian Building -- is in the public domain. It was obtained from Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Church_(ranger) 

The image of a 19th Century engraving depicting the capture of Chief Anawan ("Annawon") is from the author's copy of Nathaniel Philbrick's book Mayflower (p. 341).

The photo of the entrance to Anawan Rock is from the website SGC (SouthCoast Ghost): Investigating the Paranormal in Southeast Massachusetts http://southcoastghost.weebly.com/king-phillips-war.html

The fall photo of Anawan Rock in Rehoboth, MA is from the blog Wicked Yankee at http://wickedyankee.blogspot.com/2011/11/anawan-rock-rehoboth-ma.html

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Copyright, John D. Tew

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Treasure Chest Thursday (January 2, 2014) -- The Russell Cooke and Mary Vinal (Otis) Cooke Family Circa 1852

The Russell and Mary Vinal (Otis) Cooke family circa 1851.

Edith McIntyre's handwritten inscription on the reverse side of the photograph identifying the people in the photo. 

Well, 2014 is off to a great start from a genealogy point of view -- as this post will demonstrate!

Over the holiday season of the last two weeks, I have been busy doing some cleaning and rearranging of my home office space -- which is the repository for all my genealogy materials (books, documents, artifacts, etc.).  While cleaning up I came across a box that my mother gave me within the last year or two.  It contains mostly some old photographs, letters and notes from my mother's mother. Among the loose materials in the box -- that I obviously had not paid enough attention to previously -- was the undated letter from my grandmother to her daughter (my mother) shown above.  The letter was not in an envelope and was merely folded in half and placed in the middle of a stack of photos and notes in the box. [While it is a two-sided letter, only the front page is of any relevance to this post.] 

When I came across the letter in yet another quick review of the contents of the box during my cleaning, this time a photograph popped out and I paused to look at it, to examine the handwriting on the back, and then finally I focused in on the content of my grandmother's letter to my mother. And that was when I experienced my latest "Eureka Moment!" 

The photograph within the folded letter from my grandmother is shown above. The photograph my grandmother sent to my mother is old, but it is definitely NOT an original. It predates 1951, when my mother and father married, because the inscription on the back uses my mother's maiden name. I suspect from my grandmother's letter that the photograph is a copy made from an original daguerreotype and probably dates from the early 1930s when my mother (the oldest of three children) was a young girl. The photograph must have been sent as a gift to my mother with a duplicate provided to my grandmother (as she notes parenthetically in her letter).

There are at least three reasons why this photograph is so thrilling and important to me and my family genealogy: (1) it represents the oldest visual evidence I have of any ancestor -- my great, great, great grandparents in my maternal line; (2) it provides photo images of two ancestors I had never seen pictures of before along with a childhood photo of my great great grandfather and his six siblings that I had also never seen before; and (3) it shows a picture of Mary Vinal Otis (the mother in the photograph holding the baby) who is the link to my second proven line of descent from Richard Warren of the Mayflower! 

The identities of the people in the photograph are handwritten on the back by Edith McIntyre, the daughter of Abby Ann Ruth Cooke (1842 - 1923, the girl bottom right in the photo with the pig tails) and her husband James Harvey McIntyre. According to my grandmother's letter, Edith gifted copies of the photograph to my grandmother and my mother.  I believe the original daguerreotype/photograph was taken in 1852 because the baby in the photo, Charles Willis Cooke, was born in 1851 and looks to be about a year old as he sits on his mother's lap. The people in the photograph, left to right, are:

            Russell Cooke (1810 - 1884) my great, great, great grandfather.

            Charles Willis Cooke (1851 -     ) in the arms of his mother.

            Mary Vinal Cooke, nee Otis (1806 - 1881) -- my great, great, great grandmother.

            William Russell Cooke (1836 - 1899)

            Albert Frances Cooke (1848 -    ) sitting to the left of his mother.

            Edward Otis Cooke (1839 -    ) standing behind his brother Albert.

            Abby Ann Ruth Cooke (1842 - 1923) in pig tails sitting to the left of Albert.

            Mary Thomas Cooke (1834 -    ) standing behind Abby.

            George Henry Cooke (1843 - 1872) my great great grandfather.

Mary Vinal Otis is the 5th great granddaughter of Richard Warren, who came over on the Mayflower, and his wife Elizabeth Walker.

                                   Richard Warren m. Elizabeth Walker

                                   Anna Warren m. Thomas Little

                                   Ephraim Little m. Mary Sturtevant

                                   Mercy Little m. Job Otis, Sr.

                                   Job Otis, Jr. m. Prince  __________

                                   David Otis, Sr. m. Mary Vinal

                                   David Otis, Jr. m. Ruthy Otis

                                   Mary Vinal Otis m. Russell Cooke

My descent from the Cooke family is as follows:

                                  Benjamin Cooke m. Abigail Church*

                                  Russell Cooke m. Mary Vinal Otis

                                  George Henry Cooke m. Susannah C. Appell

                                  Walter Wilson Cooke m. Florence Leonette Flagg

                                  Ruth Eaton Cooke m. Everett Shearman Carpenter

                                  Shirley Carpenter m. Arnold G. Tew, Jr. (my parents)

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Original letter and photograph in the collection of the author.

* Abigail Church was a descendant of Richard Warren through his daughter Elizabeth and her marriage to Richard Church.  Abigail was the 4th great granddaughter of Richard and Elizabeth (Walker) Warren.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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You Never Forget Your First Time!

The romantic would surely envision and even suggest that the ideal first time should involve a yearning to be free, pristine natural surroundings by blue waters, a little adventure and exploration, and perhaps even some danger and uncertainty -- and these were all involved in my first time.  I will never forget my first time, as I shall reveal below with some detail  . . .

When I was 13 -- about the time my interest in girls really began to develop -- I spent much of my time wondering about life and the world of adults.  It was about this time that I also began listening to and enjoying the subtleties of adult conversation and the topics they enjoyed discussing and laughing about while the younger children in the family were occupied in games and childhood activities out of sight.  Piecing together what appeared to be coded clues from the adults led me to want to discover and delve into the activities that so clearly gave the adults such pleasure and fun that they enjoyed talking and laughing about them whenever they got together during holidays and occasions like weddings.

After my first time, the thrill was so intense, so entirely satisfying following the pursuit, that I felt I had fully matured and arrived.  I simply could not contain myself and, somewhat unusually, I had to immediately share the news and the story with my entire family!  Here is how it happened . . . 

I had been in pursuit of the females for a few years, but there had been five to try to conquer and I met resistance at almost every turn.  I was hitting a brick wall with every attempt to solve the mystery of the young women.  I was ready to give up and retreat back into defeat, but the goal and the anticipation of success drove me on.  I felt in my bones that the answer lay with the Cook and that I had to chase the quarry through her connection with the Church; the prospect of connecting with a Carpenter was simply wrong and clearly was not going to happen.  I decided the consummation of this ambition and the fulfillment it would bring were too important to abandon. It was necessary for me and for my future family to put this consuming desire behind me -- and I thought for some reason that my maternal grandmother really wanted to see me victorious even if she was no longer around to know about the extent of my efforts or the final realization of the dream that was beginning to obsess me.  With the thought of my grandmother firmly in mind, I decided it would be the Cook or nothing.

Within a few short months of my determined decision to pursue the Cook and abandon the Carpenter it finally happened. Eureka!  I had found the secret, conquered the female mystery and emerged triumphant.  I had to admit that it felt like nothing else I had experienced up to that time. It was transformative.  It was my first time and I knew I would never forget it.  

The emotion and the feeling of victory with Cook lasted for quite a while, but I admit that eventually it started to fade and although Cook was the one, The First, it really was not enough.  I had to reclaim that intense feeling and so after a few weeks I set my sights back on the Carpenter with renewed confidence and self assurance.  It was not the same as the first time and I suppose it never can be, but the Carpenter chase did have its own rewards and I have pursued many of them since.  I must also admit, that I did go back to a Cook again and had another intense eureka moment -- though via a different route. 

But . . . as all of you no doubt know, there is simply NOTHING like the first time that you are able to melt the frozen resistance to your concentrated efforts and appeals, that you are able to assail the brick wall and gain entrance to the inner secrets on the other side.  The feeling is so intense, so gratifying that you have to have it again and so you pursue it as often as you can knowing there will be more failures and obstacles than breakthroughs, but the rewards of success are just too great, so you are driven onward without end.  It is the same whether you are a man or a woman!

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My grandmother was the one who said during an overheard gathering of adults during some long ago holiday event, that we were descended from adventurous stock that yearned for more freedom and that uncertainty and danger on a long ocean crossing preceded the exploration of a new world abundant with natural resources.  It was she who mentioned the name Warren, but she never said whether the connection was through the Carpenter line or the Cook(e) line.  She was a Cooke and her husband, my grandfather, was a Carpenter.  

Living in New England it was not long before we visited Plymouth Plantation and learned about the people who came to America on board the Mayflower.  There were no passengers named Carpenter on the Mayflower -- and definitely no Tews since they did not arrive until 1640 -- but there were father and son passengers named Cooke (Francis and John) and other passengers named Eaton (Francis Eaton, his wife, Sarah, and their son Samuel).  My maternal grandmother's maiden name was Ruth Eaton Cooke.  

Some years ago I began my pursuit to prove Mayflower descent, which no one in my family had ever done before.  Fairly quickly I abandoned any thought that the descent was through the Carpenter family of my grandfather and began looking into the Cooke and Eaton possibilities. So far those too obvious lines of potential connection have proved to be dead ends -- and it was, after all, the name Warren that my grandmother had specifically cited.  

Richard Warren was not a Pilgrim.  He was one of the "Planters" or "Strangers" recruited to the adventure and he came over on the Mayflower alone.  His wife Elizabeth and their five daughters came a couple of years later and then two sons were born in the new world taking shape as Plymouth Colony.  

Richard and Elizabeth Warren had the good fortune to have all their children survive to adulthood and marry, AND all their children had children.  There are many lines of descent leading back to Richard Warren and mine goes through the Cooke family for five generations back to the time Benjamin Cooke married Abigail Church.  Abigail was the daughter of Ebenezer Church whose great great grandfather married Elizabeth Warren, the fourth daughter of Richard and Elizabeth Warren. 

The direct connection to Richard Warren through his daughter Elizabeth was the first genealogical brick wall I broke through.  It was the connection I was able to discover and document sufficiently to be accepted for membership in the General Society of Mayflower Descendants -- and I still remember the eureka feeling when I made the necessary connections and they held up to repeated examination.  It was almost electric and it was the first time I had ever had such an intense rush of discovery!  It was not long before I had another eureka moment when I realized there was a second connection to Richard and Elizabeth Warren that went through Benjamin Cooke's son Russell Cook.  Russell married Mary Vinal Otis.  The Otis lineage led back to Mercy Little's marriage to Job Otis and it was Mercy's grandfather Thomas Little who married Anna Warren, Richard and Elizabeth Warren's second daughter.

Here are the details of my first time -- the discovery and documentation of my Mayflower descent.  I will NEVER forget how it felt when it happened!

         

*    *    *    *    * 

  

What follows is my double descent from my 10X great grandparents Richard Warren (Mayflower passenger) and his wife Elizabeth Walker.  Richard and Elizabeth had seven children, all of whom lived to adulthood, married and had children.  Their children were: Mary (born circa 1610); Anna (born about 1611/2); Sarah (born about 1613); Elizabeth (born about 1615); Abigail (born about 1619); Nathaniel (born at Plymouth Colony about 1624); and Joseph (also born at Plymouth Colony by 1627).  I am descended from two sisters --  Elizabeth Warren Church and Anna Warren Little. 

Richard Warren m. Elizabeth Walker

Elizabeth Warren m. Richard Church                         Anna Warren m. Thomas Little

Joseph Church m. Mary Tucker                                     Ephraim Little m. Mary Sturtevant

Joseph Church m. Grace Shaw                                     Mercy Little m. Job Otis, Sr.

Caleb Church m. Deborah Woodworth                          Job Otis, Jr. m. Thankful Otis 

                                                                                        (1st cousins)

Ebenezer Church m. Hannah Wood                               David Otis, Sr. m. Mary Vinal

Abigail Church m. Benjamin Cook                                 David Otis, Jr. m. Ruthy Otis

                                                                                         (1st cousins)                                   

Russell Cook m. Mary Vinal Otis                                   Mary Vinal Otis m. Russell Cook

George H. Cooke m. Susannah C. Appell                      George H. Cooke m. Susannah C. Appell

Walter W. Cooke m. Florence L. Flagg                           Walter W. Cooke m. Florence L. Flagg

Ruth E. Cooke m. Everett S. Carpenter                            Ruth E. Cooke m. Everett S. Carpenter

(my maternal grandparents)                                             (my maternal grandparents)

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The photograph of Mayflowers (Epigaea repens) or Trailing Arbutus, is by reverend barry.  It was obtained on flickr from Yahoo! under the permission and license granted there by the copyright holder. The owner's permission and license allows sharing and remixing so long as the original work is given attribution  -- such as this.  See, http://www.flickr.com/photos/mybeautifularpeggio/3597095049 . 

Epigaea repens grew abundantly in the area of what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts when the Pilgrims arrived in 1620.  There is a tradition that the Mayflower passengers gave the flowering plant the name "Mayflower" and for this reason it was chosen as the state flower of Massachusetts.  [It is also the provincial flower of Nova Scotia.]

The photograph of the man with the scythe at Plymouth Plantation is taken from the website of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, of which I am a member.  Its use is believed to be allowed under fair use. 

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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew

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