18. New Year’s Day in the New World

Replica ship Mayflower II at the State Pier in Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA

Here in the UK the year 2020 will be marked by many people celebrating their freedom. They include the 51.89% of the population who voted to be free of Europe – the 48.11% who didn’t may not be so happy.

Then we have the 75^th anniversaries of VE Day and VJ Day.  I’m pretty confident  that 99.99% of people will be thankful for being free from the dictatorships of the Axis powers. Don’t ask me about the 0.01%.

Mayflower Steps Plymouth, UK Image credit: RobertBFC, Wikipedia

And then we have Mayflower 400, led by the city of Plymouth, Devon, with a smart website telling us that we have just over 8 months until 16^th September. 

That’s  the date of the sailing of the tiny ship which carried 102 passengers and its 30-strong crew across the Atlantic Ocean to a New World: a land where people – as they thought – would be free to live, think and worship, far from the tyranny of Europe.

Funny how history repeats itself.

Anyway you can read about the UK’s celebration of Mayflower 400 at https://www.mayflower400uk.org/ 

Pasadena Rose Parade 2007: First Cavalry Division Equestrian Unit, US Army, Ft. Hood Texas 

Image credit: Ucla90024  

Pasadena Rose Parade 2008: Tournament of Roses Parade float with white coat volunteer on scooter

Image credit: Noe Gold - Flickr

Obviously 2020 is bigger in the USA, so they’ve started the commemorations early. On New Year’s Day in fact, at 8.00 am.  

Above: Certificate of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. Founded in 1897, The Mayflower Society, or General Society of Mayflower Descendants (GSMD), is a non-profit organization. Membership requires proof of lineage from one of the passengers who travelled to America on the Mayflower in 1620.  Imagesource: http://www.hoggattfamily.com 

My American correspondent, a member of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, tells me that a star attraction among the floats in the 2020 Rose Parade of Pasadena, California will be a replica of the 'Mayflower'. 

It will be one of a total of 40 floats, together with 17 equestrian units with over 450 horses, and 20 marching bands. 

The theme of this 131st Rose Parade is ‘Power Of Hope’. 

“I am very proud that we are participating,” she writes. “The plans began five years ago and have been progressing with funding, donations, design plans, recruiting of workers at the Arena workshops in the Pasadena Arroyo and members who will walk along the ship dressed as Pilgrims.”

You can see a video of the Rose Parade at
https://www.facebook.com/groups/258577490987879/permalink/1378887812290169/   I shared this on the Conant 400 Facebook page at 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2603367279712361/

Above: An 1815 edition of A General History of New England by William Hubbard (1621-1704), chronicler of the history of New England: a friend and admirer of Roger Conant

Roger Conant was not among that first 1620 group of Plymouth Pilgrims for whom religious freedom outside the Church of England was so important. However it was at the Plymouth colony that he stayed initially.

Image credit: Hoodinski

Historians seem to vary with regard to their views of Roger Conant’s own relationship with Plymouth: some follow the account given by William Hubbard who writes of Conant’s decision to leave the Plymouth pilgrims because of his “dislike of their principles of rigid Separation”.  

However Roger Conant's biographer Clifford K. Shipton believes that “religion was not the only, or indeed the most obvious, reason for his leaving”.

For my Budleigh Salterton readers who are following this story of Roger Conant, there’s a further reason for their interest in the 1620 Plymouth Pilgrims. 

Continued at 
https://conant400.blogspot.com/2020/01/budleigh-saltertons-link-to-mayflower.html

You can access other posts on this blog by going to the Blog Archive (under the ‘About Me’ section), and clicking on the appropriate heading.