Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1921-08-17
LOCAL MAYFLOWER DESCEND.
ANTS.
Considered no Small Honor to Be of
the Pilgrim Line.

Mrs. o. M. Rowell of South Albany
is a two-line member of the May
flower successors being the 10th gen.
GRAFTON from George Soule, the ninth
from Francis Cooke, two of the May
flower passengers.
Orleans county now has three men,
bers and others are Henry Cushman
of Newport and Charles Foster of
Derby Line.
In the Mayfower society Massachu-
sets shows the largest membership,
although there are members in nearly
every state; also one in Paris, one in
London, two in Shanghai.
Senator Lodge in his famous Ter
centenary speech said: "Those who
can claim the Pilgrims as ancestors
would not change their lineage for
any that could be furnished by COM
pliers of peerages."
Often we hear persons remark
"serio-comically" that they descend
ed from one of the 10000" families
who came over in the Mayflower, but
we are cognizant of the fact that of
the actual number of passengers, 104,
only % of that number have any
known descendants.
The story of the little band Of hunt
England to HollarA thence to the new
world need not be rehearsed, it is as
familiar as a twice-told tale; it has
awakened the Imagination of poet and
painter, and novelist; yet, now at the
300th anniversary of their coming
they are freshly remembered" and
have taken a place in the thoughts of
uncounted thousands in a manner per-
mitted only to an event decisive i'm tho
worlds history.
We must look before and after, and
from the doers of high deeds, from
the makers of rare events decisive in
history, we must seek for light and
leading, for help in facing the known
and shaping as best we may the forces
which govern the unknown, vet the
Plymouth settlers themselves had
deep down in their hearts sense of
the magnitude of what they were do
ing. They felt in the depths of their
beings that they were laying the foun-
dation Of q mighty nation.
True, there had been earlier but
feeble settlements; although for ten
years they were the only English
settlement north of Chase-peak. But
what the Pilgrims had achieved in
those first ten years could never be
absolved in the work. of other men.
jamestown and Plymouth were the
corner-stones Of the foundation upon
which the great fabric of the United
States has been built up; and the I'm
tied States is today one of the domi-
nant factors in the history and in the
future of the world of men.
But on Plymouth rock, on that bleak
december day in 1920 was the begin
ming of the superb creation we know
as America: the America that was to
stand for a new idea, the liberty of
the Individual human being.
Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod,
found,
Freedom to worship God.
When in the cabin of the Mayfower,
the Pilgrims covenanted together to
live in peace and harmony, with equal
rights to all, obedient to Just laws
made for the common good: truly a
nobler document is not to be found
among the records of the world.
Plymouth Rock "as the stepping
stone" of the Republic does not mark
beginning nor an end; it marks a
revelation of that which is without
beginning and without end, pur-
pose, shining through eternity with
a respondent light, undimmed even
by the imperfections of men, and a re-
sponse. an answering purpose, from
those who obvious, disdainful of all
else sailed hither seeking only for an
avenue for the immortal soul.
Yet, the Pilgrims thrift is vanished,
And the Pilgrims faith is dead,
And the Pilgrims God is banished,
And Mammon reigns in his stead;
And work is damned as an evil,
And men and women cry,
In their restless haste, Let us spend
and waste,
md live for fo,,,o x,,o IL