Hayes Presidential receives Mayflower Families book donation
The Hayes Presidential Library & Museums has received a donation of five books tracing family history of descendants of some of the first settlers in the United States that will help patrons with genealogy research.
The Society of Mayflower Descendants of the State of Ohio and the Society of Mayflower Descendants, Toledo Colony, donated five “Silver Books” to the Hayes Presidential Library.
The Silver Books are a set of volumes that detail the pilgrims aboard the Mayflower ship and their descendants for several generations. There are an estimated 10 million people living in the United States who are descendants of the people who came here on the Mayflower in 1620, said John Ransom, Hayes Presidential Library head librarian. “This is kind of the bible for the researchers of the first families that came over,” Ransom said of the Silver Books. “There are only a few libraries that get these books. They are very important research resources.”
The books help descendants verify their lineage to the Mayflower families.
The new books cover parts of the John Alden, Thomas Rogers, William Brewster and Edward Winslow family lines. They bring the Hayes library’s total number of Silver Books to 42.
The donation was made possible by Susan Fisher, lieutenant governor of the Society of Mayflower Descendants, Toledo Colony, and Ann Fox Gulbransen, historian for the Society of Mayflower Descendants in the State of Ohio. Located at Spiegel Grove at the corner of Hayes and Buckland avenues in Fremont, the Hayes Presidential Library & Museums is America’s first presidential library and the forerunner for the federal presidential library system. It is partially funded by the state of Ohio and affiliated with the Ohio History Connection.
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