Yakima family has Pilgrim pedigree

YAKIMA – Steven Arnold found the missing link in the basement of a building on the East Coast.

Acting on a hunch and information from a couple of old genealogy books, he traveled to Maine in search of records he hoped would prove that his wife’s family had descended from a Mayflower passenger.

On a handwritten property deed dated 1828, Arnold found the evidence that would allow his wife and mother-in-law to join the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.

Three months after discovering the document – and just in time for Thanksgiving – four generations of the Arnold family got their official paperwork from the society.

“It was a tear-jerker,” said 35-year-old Mellisa Arnold-Mullins, recalling how her father presented the certificates to the family at the state society’s meeting last week in Bellevue. “He went up and gave all the kids their certificates, and we got a standing ovation.”

It took the family three years of research to get there. Since Arnold was already a society member, his daughter and grandchildren would have qualified to join. But the newly established eligibility of his wife and her mother brought it all together, making it possible for four generations of the Arnold family to be inducted on the same day.

“I’m still excited about it,” said Arnold, 56, recording secretary of the state society and treasurer for the Margaret Hyre Mid-Columbia Colony of the Society of Mayflower Descendants.

Documentation is required to join the society, which was founded in 1897 to bring people together to celebrate their common heritage and carry on the memory of their ancestors. Today, there are more than 26,000 members – including about 450 in Washington state.

Membership makes up less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the United States’ approximately 290 million people. But it’s estimated that 35 million Americans could be descended from Mayflower passengers.

Descendants now officially include 77-year-old Virginia Markham, Arnold’s mother-in-law; 55-year-old Judith Arnold, his wife; their daughter, Arnold-Mullins; and their grandchildren, 16-year-old Jessica Bacon, 14-year-old Jennifer Bacon and 6-year-old J.T. Mullins. They are 12 to 15 generations removed from Mayflower passenger Richard Warren.

Arnold is a descendant of Mayflower passenger John Howland, who fell overboard during the voyage but managed to climb back into the vessel and eventually married Elizabeth Tilley, another passenger.

Through his research, Arnold had a hunch his wife also descended from a passenger. But he only got so far on the family tree before getting stuck on a limb.

He knew his wife was related to an 18th-century woman by the name of Leah Locke. It took years of research and a cross-country trip, but Arnold eventually proved that Locke was a descendent of Richard Warren.

“In order to prove this line, we had to prove Leah Locke was the right Leah Locke,” said Arnold, who found proof in Portland, Maine, during an eight-day visit to New England in August.

During the vacation, he and his family attended reunions of Howland and Warren descendents, visited the Howland homestead and spent hundreds of dollars copying records, including the property deed that established the link.

Finding the deed marked another milestone: It’s uncommon in Western states – except maybe California, which has more than 2,700 Mayflower Society members – to have both a husband and wife descended from the ship’s passengers.

And, it’s less common out in Eastern Washington, where there are only about 70 members, said Seattle’s Don Wingerson, immediate past governor of the state society and its current corresponding secretary.