Today, September 16, is Mayflower Day. This is the day, in 1620, that the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth, England to the New World.

A few years ago my husband and I spent the July 4th weekend searching Ancestry.com for our family history.  His was decidedly more interesting than mine during that search. We found that he, through his mother, was a descendant of the Mayflower. That means our two boys are descendants of the Mayflower. Actually they are all descendants of the Hopkins family who set sail with the others to find a new life in a new world.

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Oh, what it was like I do not want to know first hand. But it is quite exciting from a family history point of view that my guys bloodline follows back to the first settlers.  The Hopkins family was the one to have a baby before arriving on land: Oceanus was his name.  He lived to be 6 years old.

So what would the voyagers on the Mayflower find in the new world? We know what we are taught in history classes about the wilderness and the native people the pilgrims encountered. We know that they foraged for clams and periwinkles. We know they fished and spent a whole lot more time outdoors than we do now.

But, what I really want to know was if these people enjoyed beach combing? Did they play in the sand and build castles? Did they sit on any beaches at any time and watch the waves, enjoy the shorebirds?  They they swim in the ocean? Did they get up early to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic? And before he died, did Oceanus play on any beaches or swim in the ocean? We may never know.

Happy Mayflower Day!