General Society of Mayflower Descendants to Digitize Applications and Documentation

The latest issue of the American Ancestors magazine from the New England Historical and Genealogical Society (NEHGS) is filled with information about the upcoming 400th anniversary of the Mayflower, in 2020.  There is lots of good info here, but one article is particularly exciting for this genealogist.  “Digitizing and Making Mayflower Society Applications Available Online!” describes how NEHGS is working with FamilySearch and the General Society of Mayflower Descendants (GSMD) to digitize all successful Mayflower Descendants applications and supporting documentation (p. 10).  There are many gems in here!

I just requested some application documentation from the GSMD librarian this month.  The society has copies of an old family Bible and a letter written in the 1800s about a branch of my family.  I only found out that they had these documents because the documents were listed in the already-documented generations on my Mayflower application.  Thankfully, after this project is complete, these rare documents will be much more easily accessible.

It will take some time to bring up this collection.  The project involves digitizing and indexing over a million pages of documents, but the goal is to have this collection available by the 2020 anniversary.

So glad to hear this project is getting underway, since there are some gems in there.