Before you open the mouth do the Math

“My great-great-great-many-times-removed grandfather was on the ‘Mayflower’.” I’ve heard so many times wonderful stories about many-times-removed great uncles, grandmothers and siblings that came by “Mayflower” from so many people I met here that one day I got curious how many passengers could the Mayflower take aboard?

Between 1620 and 1630 a vessel named "Mayflower" crossed the seas three times. One in 1620 carried the Pilgrim Fathers to New Plymouth; one in 1629 carried the Higginson party to Salem; and one in 1630 carried the Winthrop party to Charlestown. It has generally been assumed that these three voyages were made by the same ship. William Bradford says that “the strong probability is that the voyages of 1629 and 1630 were not made by the ship that sailed in 1620." Bradford says of the Mayflower company: "These being about a hundred souls, came over in the first ship." Afterwards he adds: "Of these one hundred persons who came over in this first ship together, the greatest half died in the general mortality, and most of them in two or three months' time." So the exact number seems like 50 passengers who made it on the Mayflower.

            I can’t help but compare the growing number of Mayflower passengers with the number of volunteers helping Vladimir Lenin to carry a heavy log at the First Bolshevik Free Labor spring event that took place on Saturday – Sabbath, which is Subbota in Russian. The event became known as “Subbotnik” and was designed to set a heroic example of true communist free labor. The picture in our school books depicted the balding grandfather of communism with several people behind him. Many times during school meetings we hosted speakers who shared their memories of carrying the log elbow to elbow with Lenin himself. We kids sat with our mouths wide open: these people saw Lenin.

            Another historic event tempted even more – the murder of the last Tsar of Russia Nicolas II. The prideful chain of murderers bragged about the brightest moment of their life to children in every school without any shame. Shaking their revolvers above their heads, men and even women boasted. “We took the Tsar and his wife Alexandra, their children, servants including the doctor and the cook downstairs and pronounced the verdict of the Bolshevik Government. Justice prevailed: we couldn’t wait to start shooting. The daughters had their family’s jewelry wrapped around their bodies under their nightgowns, so we didn’t kill them with the first volley. The girls were screaming and running along the wall, trying to hide. We had to continue shooting until it was all over.”   Later we started getting the children of those heroes with the stories of their fathers and mothers. The legends continued growing as well as the number of participants.

            If we truly placed all those people claimed by the descendants on the Mayflower, linked them to the log and into the basement of the house where the Tsar was killed, the ship would sink, the log would be hundreds and hundreds miles long, and the basement will be of the size of the city.

            We all can get enthused as children when we witness something exciting and then we share with our children, and they, in their turn, want to share it with their kids what their parents witnessed. We all want to belong to great names or relate to great events but why can’t we sometimes simply do the math first.