What might YOU have in common with:
John Adams, Julia Child, Hugh Hefner, Richard Gere, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Duke Snider, Katharine Hepburn, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Presidents George H.W. and George W. Bush, Dick and Jerry Van Dyke, Marilyn Monroe, RADM Alan B. Shepard (USN), President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Clint Eastwood, Dr. (not Mister) Spock, Alec Baldwin, Humphrey Bogart, Grandma Moses, Christopher Lloyd, Orson Welles, 3/5ths of ‘The Beach Boys’, Chevy Chase, and many others?
Perhaps more than you thought!
For millions of living Americans, their family’s actual Ellis Island Moment occurred in December 1620 on a lonely, cold and frightening stretch of Cape Cod beach at the edge of the Nauset, Patuxet and Wampanoag homelands. For these ‘Saints’ and ‘Strangers’ the next few years would be more difficult, dangerous, and wonderful than they could ever have imagined. They suffered, persevered, made alliances, adapted, and survived, and their story is at the very beginnings of our common American heritage.