CHARLOTTE — On Thanksgiving, one Charlotte priest has a particularly personal reason to celebrate.
Father Patrick J. Winslow, vicar general and chancellor for the Diocese of Charlotte, is directly descended from the original group of Pilgrim Fathers who landed in 1620 on Plymouth Rock in what is now Massachusetts, as well as a second group of Pilgrims who followed on a subsequent Mayflower voyage in 1629.
The Mayflower was the famous ship that transported a group of more than 100 English men, women and children – collectively known today as the Pilgrims – from Plymouth, England, to the New World, where they hoped to enjoy religious freedom.
The Pilgrims' 1620 voyage on the Mayflower to the New World has become an iconic story in American history, with its story of death and survival in the harsh New England winter. And the culmination of the voyage in the signing of the Mayflower Compact is an event which established a rudimentary form of democracy, with each member contributing to the welfare of the community.
Father Winslow remembers hearing his father retell stories about their family's heritage that were passed down from his grandfather Chester, who was born in 1891.
Pictured above: "The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth," by Jennie Augusta Brownscombe (1914)
"What I remember as a child was a story my grandfather told my father," Father Winslow recalls. "He related to my father and my aunt about the Winslow brothers on the Mayflower. We never focused on it, but it was brought up occasionally.
"I also heard that my aunt, who lived in Boston, took her children one year to see a display on the Pilgrims on the Mayflower. There was information on the three Winslow brothers. I grew up as one of three Winslow brothers, so that is kind of funny."
Many of the Pilgrims were "Separatists" fleeing persistent religious persecution, but some were hired hands, servants or farmers recruited by London merchants. All planned to settle in Virginia, where England had already established its first successful colony at Jamestown, but instead they landed further up the East Coast in what is present-day Massachusetts.
The Pilgrims' journey to religious freedom has become a central theme in American history and culture.
Their leadership came from the religious congregations of Brownist English Dissenters who had fled the volatile political environment in England for the relative calm and tolerance of 16th-17th century Holland. Concerned with losing their cultural identity, the group later arranged with English investors to establish a new colony in the promising frontier of North America. The colony, founded in 1620, became the second successful English settlement (after the founding of Jamestown in 1607) and later the oldest continuously inhabited English settlement in what was to much later become the United States.
The Pilgrims are not to be confused with the Puritans, who established their own Massachusetts Bay Colony nearby (present-day Boston) in 1628. Both groups were strict Calvinists, but differed in their views regarding the Church of England. Puritans wished to remain in the Anglican Church and reform it, but Pilgrims wanted complete separation from the state-sanctioned church, which they suspiciously viewed as being too "papist."
"My grandfather, Chester, was not Catholic. So he would have been part of the tradition of those who had come over on the Mayflower. But my grandmother, Margaret, was Catholic. My father and his sister were raised Catholic in Albany, N.Y.," says Father Winslow.
"It's kind of an irony (that I am now a Catholic priest). (My ancestors) found that the Anglican Church was too Catholic!" he laughs.
The Winslow family emerged in the early 14th century England as a loosely-knit clan living in the vicinity of the hamlet of Winslow, in Buckinghamshire (50 miles northwest of London), from which they adopted their name.
Father Winslow traces his lineage back to three Pilgrim Fathers: two of whom are uncles, and one a direct ancestor.
One of his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-uncles was Edward Winslow, who later became the third governor of the Plymouth colony, serving from 1633 to 1634. Just 25 when he boarded the Mayflower and set out for the New World, he was joined by his 20-year-old brother Gilbert Winslow.
Both Edward and Gilbert Winslow signed the Mayflower Compact.
"Being raised in upstate New York and visiting New England, when I would go to a hotel or people would see my name on a credit card, people would make comments about having a family connection to a Winslow... People who are local grew up with that being a historical name in the area."
Edward Winslow did not stay in Plymouth, though. In 1646 he traveled to England to serve the Puritan government of Oliver Cromwell, and never returned. In 1655 he died of fever while on a British naval expedition against the Spanish in the Caribbean. He was buried at sea. He is the only Plymouth colonist with a portrait, which today is displayed at Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth.
Edward Winslow was also the author of several important pamphlets, including "Good Newes from New England," and he co-wrote with William Bradford the historic "Mourt's Relation," which is one of only two eyewitness accounts we have of the First Thanksgiving in 1621.
We commonly trace the Thanksgiving holiday to this 1621 celebration at the Plymouth colony, where the Plymouth settlers held a harvest feast after a successful growing season.
Squanto, a Patuxet Native American who lived among the Wampanoag tribe, taught the Pilgrims how to catch eel and grow corn and served as an interpreter for them. Squanto had learned to speak English while living in England, where he had worked after being freed by Franciscan priests from his Spanish slave owners and then converting to Catholicism.
The Pilgrims celebrated at Plymouth for three days after their first harvest in 1621. It included 50 Pilgrims (all who had survived of the original 100) and 90 Native Americans invited as guests.
The feast was cooked by the four adult Pilgrim women who survived that first harsh winter in the New World, including one of Father Winslow's distant aunts, Susanna (White) Winslow.
Edward Winslow, in his account of the early days of the Plymouth colony entitled "Mourt's Relation," wrote: "Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which we brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty."
Edward and Gilbert's 30-year-old brother Kenelm followed them to Plymouth on a second Mayflower ship that landed on May 16, 1629, with 35 passengers. Kenelm Winslow is Father Winslow's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.
Kenelm Winslow purchased several land grants, later becoming one of the 26 founding proprietors of Assonet (now Freetown), Mass. He held various town offices, including deputy to the general court from 1642 to 1644 and from 1649 to 1653. He had considerable litigation experience, as early court records show. He died in Salem, Mass., on Sept. 13, 1672.
Like his ancestor more than 350 years ago, Father Winslow has also served as a lawyer – a canon, or Church, lawyer.
Originally from upstate New York, Father Winslow was ordained in 1999 by Bishop Howard J. Hubbard at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany, N.Y. He transferred to the Diocese of Charlotte in 2002.
He earned an advanced degree in canon law from The Catholic University of America and serves the marriage tribunal as "defender of the bond," a diocesan official charged with defending the validity of the marriage bond in annulment cases.
Father Winslow attributes learning more about his family history to a moment of Divine Providence not long ago. He was leading a mission at Sacred Heart Church in Salisbury when a smiling woman approached him.
She said, "Father, I think we're related." He said, "Really? Why's that?" She told him her maiden name was Winslow. He looked at her more closely and found that she looked just like his aunt, his father's sister. She told Father Winslow that he looked just like members of her family.
"She said, 'Let me guess, you're all Renaissance men.' I said, 'What do you mean by that?' She said 'Arts and sciences, accomplished...it's a family trait.'"
She sent Father Winslow the chain of genealogy so he could see clearly their family line.
"It was really funny. Here I am in North Carolina and a woman comes up and makes that connection," he says.
What does Father Winslow think his Pilgrim ancestors must have been like?
"They must have been courageous, because of that journey and going into what would have been an exotic and unknown land," he says. "They must have had a confidence in their abilities."
And the younger generations of Winslows? How do they view their family tree?
"My nephew loves it!" Father Winslow says of his nephew Matthew, now a sixth-grader."He's taken a great interest in the family history. It has really captured his imagination. He is really proud of that fact and it is certainly becoming a part of his memory."
— SueAnn Howell and Patricia Guilfoyle, Catholic News Herald