Five Lake Havasu City residents have proved their family’s lineage, tracing their roots to the 102 men and women who sailed the Atlantic Ocean for 66 days to accidentally start Thanksgiving.

Jackie Leatherman/News-Herald Photo. Betty Crippin, left, Dolores Jean Brostrom and Charles Thomas — all Lake Havasu City residents — sat around Crippin’s dining room table recently and discussed their family heritage which links them to Pilgrims on the Mayflower. The descendants brought plaques, books and documentation from their years of research.

Their great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-grandparents were Pilgrims on the Mayflower in 1620.

Three of them shared their stories of how they learned about their ancestors — the Pilgrims, who created the Mayflower Compact and ate a simple meal 388 years ago that has become an American tradition.

Dolores Jean Brostrom

Descendant of: John Alden and Priscilla Mullins

In 1969, Dolores’s father received a letter from a cousin who had been searching for him for 35 years.

That letter — written by William F. Alden — eventually led Dolores to her roots buried in long-kept secrets that the family’s heritage carried Native American blood stretching to Tecumseh, revered as one of the greatest leaders of the Shawnee Indians.

“It’s difficult to get the proof,” she said. “My mother researched a lot of this, even though it was on my father’s side.”

Dolores remembers as a child hearing family stories of being related to John and Priscilla.

“All I knew about that is what I learned in school,” she said. “I kind of kept it quiet and didn’t say much about it.”

It took three years for Dolores to compile all of her family ties, and she received her acceptance into The Mayflower Society in September.

She is the eighth great-granddaughter of John and Priscilla. John was a farmer, born in England in 1599, and hired to stay in the new colony for one year. John and Priscilla, who also crossed the Atlantic with her family on the Mayflower, married in 1621 and had 11 children.

“I’ve just been very excited about it,” she said. “I toot my horn too much, I guess.”

Betty Crippin

Descendant of: Richard Warren

Betty’s father left her family during the Great Depression in search of work — and never came back.

“I didn’t know my father or my father’s family until I was 40 years old,” she said. “No one had gone into (our ancestry) and delved into it enough to find the proof, until I did.”

A relative of Betty’s father tipped her off to the possible connection and Betty started her three-year research from scratch in the mid-80s. She received her Mayflower acceptance in 1989.

“It’s an interesting hobby,” she said. “It becomes very addictive. You are never through with your genealogy research.”

London merchants recruited Richard Warren for the trip, she said. He left his wife and five children.

Betty is the only one of the three local descendants who has visited Plymouth, Mass., where the Pilgrims settled.

“It was fascinating,” she said. “It really was. It gave you goose pimples…”

Charles Thomas

Descendant of: Thomas Rogers

Charles’s grandmother, who was born in Maine, always had an inkling that there was a little more to their family’s history than meets the eye.

He compiled research that sat in the bottom drawer of his mother’s dresser after his grandmother’s death. His grandmother received her acceptance into the Mayflower society three days after she died.

In 1974, Charles’s mother passed away.

“The first thing I did was open the bedroom and that bottom drawer and I took everything I could,” he said.

Charles remembers first hearing about his lineage when he was 8 or 9 years old.

“It wasn’t until after I retired that I had the time and inclination to go through that,” he said.

Thomas Rogers was a textile merchant who left his wife to come to the new country to make a profit. He sailed on the Mayflower with his son, Joseph.

Charles said what makes him most proud is his ancestors’ design of the Mayflower Compact.

“You feel you’re somebody, but at the same time, so is everybody else,” he said.

In Arizona, there are 390 members in The Mayflower Society, an organization only for Pilgrim descendants. Nationwide, there are more than 26,000 members.

Descendants spend years and hundreds of dollars gathering records: birth, death, marriage, divorce, baptismal, cemetery, church, obituaries, military, land and government censuses to prove their lineage.

After The Mayflower Society verifies every piece of paper submitted with an application, the grandchildren of the country’s forefathers are finally inducted.

“They have to document from themselves back to their ancestors who came over on the Mayflower,” said Bonnie McCulley, historian for the state chapter. “They have to prove from one generation to the other that they link to the bloodline. For some people, it can be very difficult. (It is) estimated that one out of every five people, if they did their research, could probably apply for The Mayflower Society.”

You may contact the reporter at jleatherman@havasunews.com.