Electronic Submission

 Beginning at the end of 2023, the General Society of Mayflower Descendants is only accepting applications electronically. This means that you no longer need to print hard copies of your documents to send to your Historian, and we no longer have to ship packages of paper documents to GSMD. This is a big savings for all of us in printing and postage costs.

This change does introduce some new considerations. Documents that you get on paper from a courthouse or other repository need to be converted to digital format. The best way is to scan the document to a digital format. If you do not own a scanner, your local library or a nearby office supply store may be able to assist you with scanning. Your last resort should be photographing a document with your phone. If you must do so, make sure the document is flat (not folded), your phone is parallel to the document to the image is not skewed and that your phone is set to take high resolution images.

If you are downloading digital images from a website such as Ancestry or FamilySearch, when you have a choice of image format, pick jpg and the highest resolution you can. If you have to choose a pdf file, please send those copies as it only takes a few seconds to convert them to jpg. You need to actually download each image, not take screenshots. Each document must be a separate image file.

Some additional guidelines:
* Always choose jpg as the format ir possible as that is the only one that works on the Mayflower servers 
* Do not embed your images in a Word document. We need the actual image so we can manipulate it for optimal legibility
*If you download a headstone photo from Find-a-Grave, copy and paste the cemetery location at the bottom of the image
*Name your digital files with the first character(s) being the generation the document applies to and then a brief description, e.g. 9 Birth cert John or 8 marriage
*If you have multi-page documents such as books or Bible records, you may send them as pdf files and we will extract the individual pages.

When you are ready to submit your documents, please do not try to share them with OneDrive or Google Drive as we may not have accounts for those services. If you have just a few documents to send, you can email them if you are comfortable doing so. You can also use a web based service such as WeTransfer to send many files. This is a free service.

If you are having trouble following these instructions, please contact your Colony historian, Deputy Historian or Ohio Historian for assistance. 
 

Marriages

 You may have noticed that Mayflower is focusing a lot of attention on marriage documentation. There are frequent notations by the marriage line on many applications that says "One and the same." This means that it is not clear that the line carrier for that generation is actually on that marriage record.

Say you have two cousins named Daniel Smith. They are cousins through their fathers. One of the Daniels is a Mayflower descendant through his mother. The other Daniel has no ties to the Mayflower. Next, you have a marriage record showing that Daniel Smith married Mary Jones. There are no names of parents on the record. So, which Daniel is it? That is the issue we are trying to solve.

We see many marriage records that do not include the names of the parents. Of course, we always home each applicant can get long form marriage certificates for all the generations in their line, but this is not always possible. For an applicant, we have an extra form that can be submitted where the applicant attests to the names of his/her parents. For other living individuals in the line, we have used copies of marriage announcements and even wedding invitations. An obituary or will of a parent can often make the connection. 

For deceased individuals, we always look to see if the full name of the spouse is on the death certificate. An obituary or burial record can be used. Having both names on a shared headstone or when relationships are specified on a headstone. Census records 1880 and later include relationships. A will or probate record linking the line carrier to his/her parents is a great find. You may also be able to find a secondary source about the family that clarifies the relationships.

As you are putting your application together, try to find long form marriage records that include the names of parents, but when you can't, you need to find other documents that clarify that you have the right line carrier in the marriage record.