A Kin Travels on the Mayflower

Audrey Knowles Stradling Thompson (wife of John Carter Thompson Sr and mother to Kathryn Thompson Hill, John C Thompson Jr, Harry Edwin Thompson, Rodman Clement Thompson, Bertha Thompson Ludwig, and Sara Thompson Kresge) was a direct descendant of Mayflower passengers Stephen Hopkins (1581-1644) and his daughter Constance Hopkins Snow (1606-1677).

Stephen Hopkins was an English adventurer, tanner, and merchant, and later assistant to the governor of the Plymouth Colony. Constance was Stephen’s daughter by his first wife Mary. After Mary died, Stephen married Elizabeth Fisher. Stephen and Elizabeth, and Constance, traveled together on the Mayflower. Stephen and Elizabeth had 7 children, including a son Oceanus born at sea on the Mayflower. Constance married Nicholas Snow; they had 12 children!

The Mayflower landed near present-day Plymouth (Cape Cod) Massachusetts on November 21, 1620 after a long and arduous 66-day journey from Plymouth England. The ship carried 102 settlers who established the first permanent European Settlement in the new land. The settlers were known as Pilgrims. The Pilgrims left England because of religious persecution by the Church of England which was controlled by the King. The King demanded compulsory membership in the Church of England.

A historic legacy of the Colony was the creation and signing of the Mayflower Compact, a 200-word document that was the first framework of government written and enacted in the territory that would later become the United States. The Compact was the governing document until 1690 when the colony joined the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The extraordinary aspect of the Compact was that it was the idea of law and cooperation made by the people to whom it was to govern, an idea that lies at the heart of democracy.