Francis Eaton of the Mayflower (1596-1633)

Francis Eaton of the Mayflower (1596-1633)This description of the family of Francis Eaton, and his descendants for sometimes seven generations, joins a long series of some 25 volumes published by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants since 1975. Many articles and books have been compiled which describe the families and descendants of a small group of passengers in 1620 on a small merchant vessel named the Mayflower. This current volume is the most recent attempt to compile all known

This description of the family of Francis Eaton, and his descendants for sometimes seven generations, joins a long series of some 25 volumes published by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants since 1975. Many articles and books have been compiled which describe the families and descendants of a small group of passengers in 1620 on a small merchant vessel named the Mayflower. This current volume is the most recent attempt to compile all known materials on Francis Eaton and his descendants, including all spouses and children. A carpenter by trade, Francis Eaton would have been an essential person in the passengers' plan to build houses in their new settlement on a foreign shore. Intermarriages among the descendants of some twenty other Mayflower passengers means that living persons descended from Francis Eaton may number among the estimated 35 million living Mayflower descendants worldwide, with about 10 million living in the United States of America. The 1996 predecessor of this 2023 volume was compiled by researcher Robert S. Wakefield and gave the reader 58 families in the first four generations, while this volume describes 75 families.

Documented by church records, deeds, wills and other available records, this volume should be referred to for many years. It includes the descendants not covered in the Wakefield volume of 1996 because they were mentioned in other volumes of Mayflower families published 1975 - 1996. As could be expected, some of the Mayflower passengers with the largest descendancies are frequently mentioned in this current work. being: John Alden, Peter Brown, Francis Cooke, George Soule and Richard Warren. Another fifteen Mayflower families are found in the index under the term "Pilgrims." The lengthy index includes all names mentioned in the numerous and detailed abstracts of documents.

One not well-known incident in the history of the American Revolution was the secret undercover operation in September-October 1777 whereby a bunch of local "farmers" with hay wagons took the financial assets of the new government out of British-occupied territory in Rhode Island. Some fourteen of these men and boys are identified in this work. Other stories are linked to some descendants and their spouses, including at least one counterfeiter and one midwife. .