Vicki Tysdal, Doug Mobley and their respective families have been next-door neighbours and friends in Powell River for years.
“We look after each other’s houses when we’re gone; it’s been like having family living next door,” said Tysdal.
It turns out she was right. After years of individually researching their family histories, Mobley recently discovered the two share a common ancestor, Richard Warren, a passenger on the famous Mayflower voyage from Plymouth, England, to North America in 1620.
“I knew for a long time that Vicki had some Mayflower connection,” said Mobley. “Then I got an email from familysearch.org saying ‘we’ve found somebody that may be your ancestor.’”
He immediately phoned up Tysdal.
“I was so excited about it,” he said. “I had to tell somebody who would appreciate it.”
Warren was a 42-year-old Londoner with a wife and five daughters when he embarked from Southampton on the voyage to the New World. He was one of the 102 registered passengers, along with an estimated 30 to 40 crew who crammed into the 100-foot boat for the 66-day crossing.
The voyage was described as treacherous and miserable. Many died on the way or during the first winter in what was known as Plymouth Colony, succumbing to scurvy, tuberculosis and pneumonia. By 1621 just 53 passengers and about half the crew were still alive. Warren was one of the survivors and the 12th signature on the Mayflower Compact.
“The fact that Richard Warren survived the first winter when almost half the people on the Mayflower died, he must’ve been a tough guy,” said Mobley.
In 1623 his wife Elizabeth and five daughters, all aged 10 and under, successfully made the crossing and joined him. The couple had two more children, both boys, in the colonies.
“They must have been healthy,” said Tysdal. “A lot of people on those boats didn’t make it, so for all five girls to survive that trip and then for Elizabeth to have two more children after that they must have been fairly healthy.”
Tysdal, originally from Los Angeles, has lived in Powell River for 45 years. She is descended from the Warren’s eldest daughter, Mary. Mobley, born in Comox, can trace his family roots back to the fourth daughter, Elizabeth.
“Richard Warren is my nine times great-grandfather and Vicki’s 10th,” added Mobley.
This type of genealogical search is done through document research and not laboratory tests, said Mobley.
“This is not a DNA thing. It’s strictly an old fashioned paperwork search. I found a huge amount of stuff in old books that are out of copyright on archive.org,” he said. “I wonder if we compared our DNA if actually there’d be anything at all.”
Among these findings was that Warren was not a Puritan, but a merchant, unlike many of the passengers on the Mayflower who were leaving England to escape religious persecution.
This made a lot of sense to both Tysdal and Mobley.
“It didn’t fit that he was a Puritan because it doesn’t seem like my family,” said Tysdal.
Mobley agreed.
“Way back in my line are Quakers,” he said. “Puritans didn’t get along with Quakers worth a pinch of darn. The Quakers got thrown in jail by the Puritans for being pacifists.”
The seven children of Richard and Elizabeth Warren each married and had large families of their own, up to 12 children.
“The families were big and they kept living and multiplying,” said Mobley. “There is a claim that there are 14 million Americans who are descended from Richard Warren, so if you take that at face value, then four or five per cent of the US should be related to Vicki and me.”
Some famous Americans who can trace their lineage back to Warren include presidents Ulysses S. Grantand Franklin Delano Roosevelt, authors Hemingway, Longfellow and Thoreau, and celebrities Richard Gere and Taylor Swift.
Richard Warren died eight years after arriving in the colonies in 1628. His wife Elizabeth lived to be more than 90 years old, passing away in 1673.
Next year will be the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower voyage.
