Being related to someone who came over on the Mayflower seems like one of those things that’s easy to claim but hard to back up. Or is it?
When I got this assignment, I immediately picked up my phone and called my aunt, our family’s resident genealogist, who not only confirmed that we are indeed descended from people on the Mayflower but also rattled off the exact two passengers and their entire long line of rather prodigious offspring—right down to my dad and her.
And we are not alone by any stretch of the imagination. The same two people who spawned my family also have their DNA tentacles in millions of Americans to this very day, from former U.S. presidents to famous actors and artists to little old nobodies like me … and maybe you.
Ahead, Neil Fraser, a partner at London’s Fraser and Fraser, one of the world’s top genealogy firms, and Eva Holmes, the director of the Silver Books Project at the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, give us the history of the Mayflower descendants and explain how to find out if you have any connection to this storied boat.
Read on to learn more about this little slice of uniquely American history.
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Who was on the Mayflower, exactly?
“The Mayflower carried 102 passengers, including religious Separatists who had previously left England for the Netherlands before being unsettled and planning transport to America via England,” Fraser says. “The Separatists were unhappy with the direction of the Church of England and wanted the freedom to practice their religious beliefs.”
Not everyone was so ideologically bent, though. Fraser says in addition to the Separatists, the Mayflower carried more than 20 crew members and several tradespeople and servants who were hoping for a better life.
“The overcrowded Mayflower set off alone from Plymouth [in England] in 1620 and landed in Cape Cod 66 days later,” Fraser says. “They arrived in modern-day Massachusetts in the midst of winter without shelter or supplies, and around half died during the first winter alone.”
How many Mayflower descendants exist today?
“The Mayflower Society reckons that around 10 million Americans and 35 million people worldwide are descended from passengers on the ship,” Fraser says. You may have heard that 10% of the American population has Mayflower ties, but that’s a misconception. The current population of the U.S. is just under 350 million people, so 10 million descendants would be less than 3%.
“Even more remarkably, it is thought that only 26 men who arrived on the Mayflower have descendants,” Fraser says. “In the 406 years since the ship arrived in America, there would be between 13 and 16 generations of descendants” from the original passengers to someone who is alive today. “So the 10 million number is very achievable,” he says.
But it’s important to remember that in 400 years, there would be an “enormous number of branches on a family tree, and not all of them will have been researched or properly documented,” Fraser says. Over that many generations, records are bound to get lost, and many people just have no idea they’re related to Mayflower passengers, “so I don’t think anyone could give you an exact number.”
How could 26 families produce 35 million worldwide descendants?
“This is the interesting bit,” Fraser says. “Imagine a single Mayflower couple had three children who survived and went on to have families, and each subsequent generation averaged three children who reproduced.” Through 13 generations, they’d have about 2.4 million descendants, and by generation No. 16, we’d be looking at a total of more than 64 million descendants from that single couple!
Of course, not many families reproduce quite so exponentially, but it gives you a good idea of how fast the numbers can grow. You also have to take into account the fact that family trees rarely stay isolated. “Over 400 years, cousins married cousins, sometimes without knowing they were related,” Fraser says. “The same ancestor can therefore appear in multiple branches of a family tree.”
“The remarkable feature of genealogy is that descendants multiply across generations, but family trees overlap,” Fraser adds. “Someone alive today might descend from [Mayflower passenger] John Alden through five or six different lines and from several other Mayflower passengers as well.” This overlapping is called pedigree collapse, “and it is especially relevant to early colonial New England, where relatively small communities intermarried over generations.”
Which families descended from the Mayflower have the greatest chance of being in your family tree?
Of the Mayflower families known to have had children, some were more prolific than others. Here are the ones that most likely have room for you in their crowded genealogical history.
Elizabeth Tilley and John Howland
Let’s start with the parents of my family tree: Elizabeth Tilley and John Howland. This line of Mayflower descendants reportedly has around 2 million living members, though again, the numbers are hard to quantify.
These two lovebirds did not start off married when they left England. John Howland was a servant who was nearly killed on the voyage, and Elizabeth Tilley was a teenager whose parents both died during the first winter at Plymouth, leaving her an orphan. They eventually married and had 10 children and 88 grandchildren, Fraser says.
“John Howland’s story is quite remarkable because he was actually swept overboard during the voyage and survived by grabbing hold of a rope,” Fraser says. “Had he not survived, generations of American descendants who came after him would never have existed.” (Thanks for having a good grip, John!)
John Alden and Priscilla Mullins
Here’s another family tree that likely holds millions of members. “John Alden and Priscilla Mullins are among the Mayflower passengers believed to have some of the best documented descendant populations,” Fraser says. “It is thought that after arriving in America, they had 10 recorded children, and seven of them went on to have surviving descendants.”
Alden was a crew member on the Mayflower, signing up to be the ship’s cooper (aka barrel maker). Mullins made the journey with her parents and brother, but like Elizabeth Tilley’s family, they all died the first winter. She subsequently married Alden in Plymouth, and they moved to Duxbury, where they had 10 children and 70 grandchildren.
Fraser says the Alden Kindred of America, a group that is dedicated to documenting and preserving the history of this Mayflower couple, has compiled a database containing more than 54,000 confirmed descendants and their spouses across the first eight generations alone. But now we’re on Gen 13 or even Gen 16, and remember how fast those numbers multiply.
Mary and William Brewster
These two were definitely not servants or crew members. William Brewster was a Separatist who wanted to reform the Church of England and moved to Holland to escape persecution. He was one of the three Mayflower passengers who secured the charter to settle in the British colony of Virginia, and he and his wife Mary made the trip together with two of their sons, Love and Wrestling (yes, really).
Of course, the Mayflower didn’t make it to the Virginia colony, instead landing in Massachusetts. This meant they had no established government, so William Brewster co-drafted the Mayflower Compact, which served as the legal framework for the Plymouth colony. William and Mary had six children and 18 grandchildren.
Who are some famous Mayflower descendants?
Many famous people have (or had) Mayflower relatives. The remarkable variety “shows how people who appear to have very little in common can actually be connected through families that lived hundreds of years ago,” Fraser says.
Here are some of the biggest names:
- Presidents: John Adams, Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush
- Actors: Marilyn Monroe, Jodie Foster, Alec Baldwin, Katharine Hepburn, Clint Eastwood, Benedict Cumberbatch
- Poets and authors: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jane Austen, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ernest Hemingway
- Artists and musicians: Taylor Swift, Norman Rockwell, Pete Seeger
- Scientists and innovators: Alan Shepard, George Eastman, Dr. Benjamin Spock
- Cultural figures: Julia Child, Amelia Earhart, Hugh Hefner
OK, so how can you find out if you’re a Mayflower descendant?
“The first thing I would say is that tracing your family back 400 years is not straightforward,” Fraser says. Records may not be officially codified and could be buried in local church registers, wills and other personal papers. “The advantage with the Mayflower is that a considerable amount of research has already been undertaken. But, ultimately, it comes down to evidence.”
Here’s what to do.
Start with yourself
“The key to much genealogical research is to build a tree up slowly and surely,” Holmes says. “It’s tempting to build a tree down when you ‘know’ you have a Mayflower ancestor, but that assumes a conclusion and introduces bias.”
So start with your own branch on the family tree. Write down everything you know about your parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents and so on, focusing on names, dates, places and relationships. Dig around in your attic for scrapbooks, photo albums, baby books and family bibles that might contain information from generations past.
Search family records
“Start by locating your own birth and marriage certificates, then look for records related to your parents that name their parents, and so on down the line that brings you back to your potential Mayflower ancestor,” Holmes says.
Fraser agrees: “I would start by speaking to family members and working backwards through the generations, using whatever records are available.”
Ask your relatives, especially older ones, for any documents they have. Look on the backs of old photos for names and dates, and catalog newspaper clippings, military records, naturalization documents, and birth, marriage and death certificates.
Expand to county, state and national archives
“Census returns, wills, parish registers, land records and local archives can all help establish family connections,” Fraser says. “Wills are particularly useful because they often identify children and other relatives, sometimes providing the evidence needed to link one generation to another.”
The National Archives has helpful information to guide your search, including links to the Census going back to the 1790s. Courthouses, libraries and local historical or genealogical societies can also be a valuable resource. If you happen to live in Massachusetts, Fraser says some towns have records of births, marriages and deaths from as early as the 1630s.
Check genealogy websites
“Digital copies of many original records can be found on FamilySearch, Ancestry and American Ancestors, all of which I use quite a bit in my research,” Holmes says. Fraser says these websites are great starting points, “but I would be very cautious about accepting family trees published online without checking the supporting records.”
Find a Grave, a volunteer-run website owned by Ancestry, can also be a helpful research tool. My aunt was able to track down several relatives through pictures and leads on this website, but it’s best used as a jumping-off point, not an absolute authority.
Remember: “Just because someone has linked two people together doesn’t mean they were related, and one incorrect connection can take you down an entirely different family line,” Fraser says.
Search Mayflower-specific archives
If you’ve made it this far, you’re in luck: “The Mayflower is probably one of the better-documented groups of 17th-century emigrants you could hope to research,” Fraser says. Here’s where the Mayflower Society comes in: “In 1959, the Mayflower Society began a project to document and publish five generations of descendants of each Mayflower passenger,” Holmes says. “This would eventually be called the Silver Books Project and now often includes the sixth generation as well as sources so researchers can locate original records.”
She explains that finding an ancestor named in one of these books can save a lot of time when it comes to applying for membership to the Mayflower Society. Fraser agrees: “If you can establish a connection to one of these documented families, a substantial part of the work may already have been done.”
What should do with this information?
It’s up to you! You may just enjoy knowing that you have a link to this specific part of American history. But there are other ways to savor this information:
- Join the General Society of Mayflower Descendants or other family groups, such as the Alden Kindred. For many of these groups, you must be able to document your direct lineage.
- Participate in historical events, parades, history tours and other social groups.
- Apply for scholarships and other educational opportunities. The Texas Society of Mayflower Descendants offers one, as does the national Mayflower Society.
- Contribute your family records to historical preservation endeavors, or help others do research.
About the experts
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At Reader’s Digest, we’re committed to producing high-quality content by writers with expertise and experience in their field in consultation with relevant, qualified experts. We rely on reputable primary sources, including government and professional organizations and academic institutions as well as our writers’ personal experiences where appropriate. For this piece on the Mayflower descendants, Ally Childress tapped her experience as a longtime journalist who frequently writes about history, fun facts and common curiosities for Reader’s Digest. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
Sources:
- Neil Fraser, partner at Fraser and Fraser; email interview, Oct. 14, 2026
- Eva Holmes, director of the Silver Books Project at the General Society of Mayflower Descendants; email interview, Oct. 15, 2026
- Family Search: “Mayflower Descendants Search”
- Associated Press: “Meet John Howland, a lucky Pilgrim—and maybe your ancestor”
- Family Search: “The Life and Legacy of William Brewster”
- The Mayflower Society: “The Mayflower Profiles”
- The Pilgrim John Howland Society: “Notable Howland Descendants”
- American Ancestors: “Famous Descendants”
- National Archives: “How to Begin Genealogical Research”
- The Mayflower Society: “Silver Books Project”
- Find a Grave: “Find a Grave”
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