Thursday, November 25, 2021

Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Trying to Find Mayflower Ancestors

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's just after 9 am, and the food cooking marathon is about to start.  In less than 20 minutes iFit is streaming their Turkey Trot 5k, which, if you participate live with a subscription, you can get a free race medal.  Tempting.  I'm actually not going to do it, though.  I've never done a Turkey Trot.  Didn't it start to help people feel better about eating a lot on Thanksgiving?  Don't know.  Nah, I need to get cleaning done and such.

Some of the fam is coming over, and we're playing board games.  That's kinda my new thing that I'm getting into right now, board games.  It's such a crazy world.  Board games are exploding.  So many coming and going and the cult of the new.  I was super tempted a week ago to back a kickstarter, but talked myself out of it.  But it's not just kickstarters, there's all these Euro games, and independent games.  Do you want a puzzly game?  Worker placement?  Deck builder?  A little of everything?  It's an expensive hobby, and the more you dig, the more review/playthrough videos you watch, the bigger the wish list gets.  You will be poor for life if there isn't restraint. Eh.... no comment.

But for Black Friday there are all these game deals going on.  I impulsed bought Azul last night on Amazon, regretted it, and tried to cancel.  They must have hired a lot of people, because within a couple hours that thing was ready for shipping.  Pandemic and Ticket to Ride are also crazy good priced right now.

Streaming services are also having all these deals.  A month or so back my parents and I decided to give up satellite television.  It is so strange!  In terms of streaming I subscribe to a service that allows me to watch live British/French/Irish television, and I've got Wondrium (formerly Great Courses Plus) and Curiosity Stream.  Those last two I need to watch more of.  Ireland's TG4 and Japan's NHK World are free apps.  But I've been eyeing maybe getting Discovery + and or Hulu.  Discovery's deal isn't fantastic.  But Hulu has a $1 a month for a year deal.  That's super tempting.  It's with ads, but that's not a big deal. (P.S. The Great British Bake Off just finished this last week.  This season was amazing.  So, so good.)

I'm into genealogy and ancestry stuff.  For the longest time I've wondered and wanted Mayflower ancestors, but with that said, anything beyond about six generations I get dubious about.  They become Hypothetical ancestors, unless the research and documentation is tight, or DNA proof. Between now and the 1600's there's so much room for mistakes and secrets.  Following the Stufflebeam line back, for instance, isn't hard, simply because the name change is firmly rooted to a common ancestor.  I'm related to all Stufflebeam's.  Other surnames, the common ones, have issues.  

With that said, I've been playing around with Relative Finder through Family Search.  According to the service and the research of others, I'm possibly descended from a few Mayflower travelers: George Soule, Degory Priest, Francis Cooke, and Richard Warren.  They all signed the Mayflower Compact, including Soule who was an indentured servant. I've been looking through the family lines leading back to these men, and some seem more sure than others, but not sure enough to try to get a membership into the Mayflower Society, or whatever it's called.  They're sticklers for tight research.  That would take a crazy amount of time, and I have other pressing research to perform.  

It would be cool if I was descended at least from one of these men.  For now they are hypothetical, until proven otherwise.  But who knows, maybe?  Regardless I picked up one of those magazine book things at the checkout line a few days ago: Mayflower, Birth of America by American Collector.  It's really cool, and the articles look interesting.  So I'll be reading it bit by bit.

I need to get to Thanksgiving prep stuff before the fam starts trickling in.  The live iFit race is happening, hopefully it's going well.  I'm just looking forward and thankful that this will be a nice holiday.  

Have a good day,
Sarah

P.S. According to Relative Finder Benjamin Franklin is my 4th cousin 10 times removed.  That's cool! Hope it's true! :D  Our common ancestor was born in 1515.... so... yeah.


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