What might -YOU- have in common with this rather DIVERSE group of Americans:
Presidents John Adams & John Quincy Adams, Julia Child, Bing Crosby, John Lithgow, Cokie Roberts, Hugh Hefner, Richard Gere, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Duke Snider, Amelia Earhart, Katharine Hepburn, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sally Field, Presidents George H.W. & George W. Bush, Dick and Jerry Van Dyke, Marilyn Monroe, America’s 1st Astronaut (Mercury-Freedom 7) and Lunar Pilot of America’s 3rd Moon Landing (Apollo Lunar Module-Antares) RADM Alan B. Shepard (USN), President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Clint Eastwood, Dr. (not Mister) Spock, Humphrey Bogart, Grandma Moses, Christopher Lloyd, Prof. Angela Davis, Orson Welles, 3/5ths of ‘The Beach Boys’, Chevy Chase, and MILLIONS of others? (Yup – they’re all directly descendant from the original Mayflower ‘Pilgrims’!)
. . . So, just perhaps you’ve more in common than you thought!
For millions of living Americans, their family’s ACTUAL ‘Ellis-Island-Moment’ occurred in late December of 1620 on a frozen, lonely and frightening stretch of Cape Cod beach in the Nauset and Wampanoag homelands – at a place called “Patuxet”. For these terribly unprepared ‘Saints’ and ‘Strangers’ (or zealots and dreamers) the next few years would be more difficult, dangerous, and wonderful than they could ever have imagined. They suffered severely, buried half of their number in the first year, persevered, made alliances with indigenous inhabitants, learned new ways, adapted and somehow survived. Little did they know that their small personal story would mark the very beginning of a new country’s first steps toward democracy and eventual independence.