Actress Sally Field was interested to learn on a recent episode of “Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr.” that she is a descendant of William Bradford, certainly one of the most prominent of the Pilgrims who landed in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620.
Like many people whose roots are deep in New England, I have ancestors who came over on the Mayflower — not the famous ones like Bradford, Brewster and Standish — but Francis Cooke and the Allertons, Isaac and Mary and their daughter, Mary, who was just 4 years old when she traveled on the Mayflower. Mary Allerton Cushman, in fact, was the last surviving passenger of the Mayflower.
From libraries to the Internet, the resources written about the Pilgrims are more than I would ever have time to count. But I think about them on Thanksgiving, and of the generosity shown the Pilgrims by the Native Americans, who were here first.
My six grandchildren certainly keep me thinking genealogically. Four of them definitely have Mayflower ancestry, and the other two may, as well. Four definitely have Penobscot Indian ancestry, but probably not the other two.
Recently I read a booklet by Charles Norman Shay, “Florence Nicolar Shay: Penobscot Basketmaker and Tribal Advocate.”
Florence’s story is fascinating, as she was a woman ahead of her time. She and husband Leo were living in Connecticut when Congress passed a law making all Indians U.S. citizens if they were born in U.S. territorial limits. When the election of 1928 came around, the Nicolars registered to vote and cast their ballots.
Moving back to Maine in 1930, Florence and Leo attempted to register to vote in Old Town, but were denied based on an obsolete law in Maine. She wrote in protest to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and received a letter in reply from the assistant to the commissioner for Indian Affairs that she was correct in assuming she should have the right to vote in Maine.
Once the country joined World War II, Florence added to her writing her belief that “the government has not the right to draft my boys without giving us the right to vote.” Other issues she took up included the right to education and the need for a bridge to connect Indian Island to the mainland.
By the way, both Florence and Leo worked for the war effort at Charlestown Naval Shipyard. Son Charles Norman Shay earned a Silver Star and four battle stars in World War II, serving as an Army medic, and wrote “Project Omaha Beach: The Life and Military Service of a Penobscot Indian Elder.”
Florence did live to vote in national elections, but not in local ones. She died in 1960.
The Daughters of the American Revolution, which formed nationally in 1890 and as a state organization in Maine in 1895, placed its first state historical marker in Maine on a boulder not far from the Catholic church on Indian Island. According to the “History of the Maine Society Daughters of the American Revolution” published in 1946, “The first enterprise of a memorial character was erected in honor of the Maine Indians who served in the Revolutionary War. The monument dedicated June 7, 1912, at Oldtown carries the following inscription: In honor of the Indian Patriots of the Penobscot and other tribes of Maine for their loyal service during the Revolutionary War.
“The Indians were uniformly faithful, and bore a part in every military movement conducted in the State. Three of them accompanied the Arnold Expedition to Quebec and 41 took part in the Bagaduce Expedition of 1779. The unmarked graves of many of these Indian patriots are in the old cemetery on Oldtown Island, which is today the home of the Penobscot tribe.”
The marker on Indian Island was rededicated by the DAR in the late 1980s.
Penobscot patriots are among those listed in the DAR-published book “Forgotten Patriots,” which enumerates African American as well as Native American patriots from the Revolution. The book is available at Bangor Public Library and Maine State Library in Augusta.
For i nformation on researching family history in Maine, see Genealogy Resources under Family Ties at bangordailynews.com/browse/family-ties. Send genealogy queries to Family Ties, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402, or email familyti@bangordailynews.com.