Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Student finds Mayflower ancestor

My very distant cousin, 15 year old Thomas Hull of Yakima WA, is featured in this article in the Yakima (WA) Herald Republic newspaper, dated 21 November 2006. He started researching in 2003, and has been able to join The Mayflower Society (through his father) as a result of his descent from Pilgrims William Brewster, Francis Cooke and Richard Warren.

The top of the article:

Like many teens, Thomas Hull is thankful for his family and friends. But he is also proud and thankful that his ancestors survived their first winter in the New World after traveling on the Mayflower nearly 400 years ago.

Hull, a 15-year-old WestValley Junior High School freshman, has documented his ancestry back to the ship the Pilgrims sailed on in 1620. He started the project of researching his genealogy in March 2003, and has worked on it in his spare time ever since. But, he says, "I'll never be finished researching it."

Hull first became interested in tracing his family history when his father's cousin showed him his work on their family's lineage, tracing back as far as the 1400s.


Read the article - it's great. Maybe he should talk to Zoe Williams?

I also descend from Pilgrims Richard Warren and Francis Cooke, but haven't tried to join The Mayflower Society. I don't know my distant cousin, Thomas Hull, but I would love to meet him and talk to him, and encourage him to keep studying history and doing genealogy. We need more young people like this.

2 comments:

Shane said...

I'm not as young as him but I feel lucky to have developed an interest in genealogy early on. I am currently 23 and started researching back when I was 20. I'm not sure why more young people aren't into genealogy but I know for me it was all due to circumstance. My father had a family friend who did some research for us so he could get into the SCV. He discovered some interesting things about my grandmother's past. I picked up where he left off mainly because I had the computer skills but also because I loved the thrill of the hunt and the search for new facts. There wasn't really much of an interest in the actual history. But after a while, I got caught up in it and loved finding new things about my ancestors. I've been doing it in my spare time ever since. I now know more about my family history than any of my grandparents ever did and I've met so many third, fourth, and fifth cousins along the way. What I like about it best is that studying all my ancestors and how they lived has given me a better perspective into my life and how I fit into the big picture.

Anonymous said...

1UDrYF Very good blog! Thanks!