Bonnie Wade Mucia (left) and Vicki Smith, both members of the S.C. Mayflower Society, traveled to Plymouth, Massachusetts, in September 2017 for the 41st Mayflower General Congress. Here, they stand on the front porch of the Mayflower Society House in Plymouth. The historic house was built by the great-grandson of a Pilgrim and tells the stories of the Pilgrims and their descendants. Smith made their period-appropriate Pilgrim outfits for the occasion.
Every November, Americans set aside the fourth Thursday as a special day for giving thanks. But for several hundred South Carolinians, the month’s celebrations carry some extra significance.
The members of the South Carolina Society of Mayflower Descendants, all descended from passengers who sailed from England to the New World on the Mayflower in 1620, celebrate not only Thanksgiving in November, but also Compact Day. On both days, Mayflower Society members pay homage to “the very significant contributions our ancestors made in starting this country,” says Bonnie Wade Mucia, governor of the society.
Mucia’s 11th great-grandfather, William Brewster, was one of those passengers and was present at the Plymouth colony’s first Thanksgiving in 1621, where the remaining colonists gave thanks after surviving that first harsh year.
“That was definitely not an easy voyage they made, and it was a very difficult first winter,” Mucia says, noting that, of the 102 Mayflower passengers, only about half survived to celebrate their first harvest festival. “Because of what they did, that’s what this country is founded on.”
On landing at Cape Cod on Nov. 11, 1620, the adult male passengers on the ship signed the Mayflower Compact, a brief statement of their mutual commitment to keeping order and working together in this new land.
South Carolina’s Mayflower Society remembers that historic moment each year on or around Compact Day, Nov. 11, says Mucia, a member of Palmetto Electric Cooperative. This year’s Compact Day luncheon will be held Nov. 11 at Hopsewee Plantation in Georgetown, where nationally acclaimed concert pianist Adryn Sumner will treat members to an interactive concert featuring stories about Mayflower-era composers.
“All of our families have been in America and have stayed here for 400 years,” says Mucia, who moved to Bluffton from Massachusetts 16 years ago. South Carolina’s Mayflower Society, which has more than 300 members who meet twice a year, is already planning for how the state will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower’s voyage in 2020.
Mucia gives genealogy talks to groups interested in learning more about Mayflower lineage. Often, people have heard family stories that an ancestor came over on the Mayflower, but no one has documented the line of descendants, she says.
“If you can get [your family history] back to the 1700s somewhere near the Cape, there’s a good chance you can probably get back to the Mayflower in 1620,” she says.
Every state has its own Mayflower Society. Anyone interested in learning more about South Carolina’s Mayflower Society can visit the organization’s website, scmayflowersociety.org, to find membership information and tips for tracing family lineage to the Mayflower’s passengers. Learn more about the General Society of Mayflower Descendants at themayflowersociety.org.
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Text of the Mayflower Compact
“In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience.
In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape-Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, Anno Domini; 1620.”