To say Duxbury residents are interested in history would be an understatement.
“This is a town, once you move here, you drink the Kool-Aid,” says Holly Safford, owner of the Winsor House Inn in Duxbury. “You know how important historic preservation is. People here care so much about that.”
When Holly, her husband Chuck Weilbrenner, and sons Alex and Andrew Marconi, purchased the notable but dilapidated Winsor House Inn in 2013, they saw an opportunity to use their own ancestry to play into the town’s affinity for all things historic, particularly the number of Mayflower descendants who live in the area.
Safford always heard from family lore that she was descended from the Pilgrims, but it wasn’t until her mother spent two years investigating that the family was accepted into the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.
“I am 13th generation,” says Safford. “It’s an impressive amount of work. Birth certificates, death certificates, wills, marriages, whatever people get from town clerks . . . Especially around here, people know how many [Pilgrims] they’re descended from and have done a lot of the work.”
But it was only upon doing some recent research for the inn that Holly discovered that the Winsors, who started the inn and became a well-known shipbuilding family in the area, were, like her, descendants of John and Priscilla Alden. The Winsor family purchased the land the inn is on in 1803, and maintained it throughout the 19th century. The property only left the Winsor family’s hands in the 1950s, and it continued to be passed on to different buyers until 2013, when Holly and her sons came along.
Now, Holly’s ancestry has worked its way into the business plan for the Inn, which has been restored. This month, visitors to the Winsor House will receive a free appetizer with proof of their Mayflower Society membership. (What would William Bradford order?) Themed cocktails like the “Thirsty Pilgrim” are available in the bar.
Safford isn’t the only one who has recognized that ancestry could be a boon to business.
David Gilson of Groton is also a descendant of the Alden family. His ancestry was helpful in landing himself and son Will, owner of Puritan and Co., on the popular cooking show “Top Chef” when the teams visited Plimoth Plantation. That spiraled into taping another episode at the family’s farm, the Herb Lyceum at Gilson’s. But despite Gilson’s notable lineage, he says he’s more of the “Swamp Yankee” variety.
“There’s a great saying,” Gilson said. “People that brag about their ancestry, the best part of them is underground.”
Dr. Walter Powell, executive director of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, says the organization receives between 1,600 and 1,800 applications a year. An application starts through the individual, and from there is submitted for review on the state level. It is then forwarded to the larger organization for review by verifiers who work with a director of genealogy and research. Then a final review is then performed by the historian general. The majority of applications are accepted, but since the process can take multiple years and significant legwork, many aspiring members tend to drop off along the way.
And then there are those who hope to gain ancestry, but don’t have the lineage to back it up.
“I suspect some of our staff have had inquiries from people who don’t have the connection and would like to have it,” says Powell.
After admission to the society, each member is given a state society number and a national number. They receive a quarterly publication, and most of the direct memberships through the state society provide programs, publications, websites, meetings, and an annual conference that moves around the country from year to year. Delegates have an opportunity every three years to attend the grand congress in Plymouth to discuss society business and the constitution of bylaws.
The gatherings provide a visible sense of community for members.
“Everyone that’s in the society likes to think of themselves as cousins,” says Powell.
The group is working hard to dismiss stereotypes of elitism that existed in the past, like the character references that were once required.
“We’re working hard to make the change of that. Like a lot of lineage organizations, like the DAR [Daughters of the American Revolution], SAR [Sons of the American Revolution], and us, perception is among many that it was an exclusive club not encouraging diversity or people outside of a limited circle,” says Powell. “That may have been the case in the past, but the face of our organization, like the face of the country, keeps changing.”
While the Mayflower Society itself may be changing, the town of Duxbury continues to revel in the past.
“Historic preservation is rabidly important to people in this town, which is, I think, why we’ve gotten so much support for the Winsor House. A lot of people would tear it down, and say ‘eh, put up a Fridays.’ But not in this town,” says Safford. “They don’t want anything to change.”
Megan Johnson can be reached at megansarahjohnson@ gmail.com