Not all pilgrim stories wear black hats or buckle shoes. Some travel quietly through time in meeting minutes, migration maps, and a stray penciled “(Pilgrim)” on a lineage list. No dramatic claims, no grand family lore, just a quiet truth waiting patiently until the right record whispers at the right moment.
This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful not only for the bold ancestors who stood at the prow of history, but also for the gentle ones who crossed oceans in faith and humility, leaving their legacies in ink and example rather than brass and ceremony.
For years, my husband’s Williams family cherished a tale that they were descended from a Pilgrim. The “proof” sat in a letter written in the 1960s by the family matriarch, Gertrude Honaker, who wrote that Balsora Dorval had belonged to both the DAR and a Mayflower-related society.[1]
There was only one hitch: no such membership could be found. Not with the DAR, not with the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, not in early Pilgrim lineage rolls.[2] A genealogical dead-end dressed in patriotic stationery.
Balsora, the daughter of John Hicks Williams and Catherine Jarvis was born 23 April 1821, on Long Island, New York, the eldest of ten.[3] She followed her family to Lansinghburgh, Rensselaer, New York and married Edward Dorval in 1845.[4] The couple eventually made their way to Chicago and then Toulon, Stark, Illinois.[5] She died in Toulon on 22 December 1907 and is buried there.[6] She lived a solid, steady American life. But as for those lineage memberships? Silence.
Still, I never let go of the thread. Family stories rarely spring from nothing; the facts just sometimes take the scenic route.
Then, while drafting sketches for my current genealogy project, Echoes of Brittania, I stumbled across a saved reference: The Lineages of Members of the National Society of Sons and Daughters of the Pilgrims, Vol. II. There, under membership no. 8308 for Della Ruthe Skates of Parma, Ohio, was a lineage tracing back to:
Dr. John Rodman II (Pilgrim)
(ca. 1653 – 10 Jul 1731)
m. Mary Scammon (ca. 1663 – 24 Feb 1748)
It cited Jones, Rodman Family Genealogy; History of Hocking Valley, Ohio.
And suddenly, the light came on.
Dr. Rodman wasn’t a Mayflower Pilgrim. He was a Quaker physician imprisoned in New Ross, County Wexford, Ireland for refusing to remove his hat in church.[7] He was banished to Barbadoes where he and wife Elizabeth, parentage unknown, raised their family. Two of their sons, John and Thomas, like their father was a physician; the brothers decided to relocate to Newport Rhode Island where John married second, Mary Scammon in 1682.[8] So the actual line runs: Dr. John Rodman -Thomas Rodman – Elizabeth Rodman m. Benjamin Hicks – Margaret Hicks m. Wilson Williams leading at last to the Williams family and to Balsora’s line.
When I think of Pilgrims, I think of the Mayflower voyage in 1620. I don’t picture a Quaker doctor arriving sixty-two years later by way of the Caribbean! But clearly, my definition and the definition beloved by late-1800s genealogists and patriotic club founders aren’t the same. Their scope was a bit more generous. That generosity was remembered by their great grand nieces.
So this Thanksgiving, as we’re passing around the sweet potatoes, I can finally share that I’ve solved the Pilgrim family mystery. Different ship, different year, different take on the meaning of “pilgrim.”
And here’s the delicious part: in all this, I had to laugh, because my research long ago found that the family does descend from an early Plymouth settler Robert Hicks, who arrived on the Fortune in 1621, just one year after the Mayflower.[9] Somehow, that piece drifted out of family memory while the Barbados Quaker got promoted to “Pilgrim.” It must have been the hat!
[1] Gertrude Honaker, Ancestors of the Cook Honaker Samuelson Families, family history letter written to Eileen Courtney, mid 1960s, shared with author in 2001
[2] Letter from Mrs. Thomas Gee Burkey, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution to Ellen C. Courtney, 9 Mar 1993, no record of Balsora’s membership.
[3] Findagrave.com, Memorial id 64646514, Balsora Williams Dorval (1821-1907), citing Toulon Cemetery, Toulon, Stark, Illinois, memorial maintained by Simmerly3, tombstone photo by Cindy Eberle.
Oakwood Cemetery Burial Card, John Hicks Williams and Catharine [Hicks] Williams, Lot 184, copy held by author. Balsora and her sister, Elizabeth Williams Son were transferred their parent’s burial plots.
Stark County, Illinois Personal and Statistical Particulars and Medical Certificate of Death, 1 Feb 1908, held by author. Place of birth Long Island, N.Y.
[4] 1850 U.S. federal census, Lansingburgh, Rensselaer, New York, population schedule, p. 2333, Line 24, Belsora Dorval, digital image; Ancestry.com: accessed 2 Nov 2025, image 27 of 139.
First Presbyterian Church of Lansingburgh, Rensselaer, New York, Marriages, Edward Dorval & Belsora Williams, 21 Apr 1845, digital image; members.tripod.com: accessed 8 Dec 2000.
[5] 1860 U.S. federal census, Chicago, Cook, Illinois, population schedule, p. 362, Line 35, B. Dorvol, digital image; Ancestry.com: accessed 2 Nov 2025, image 362 of 404.
1900 U.S. federal census, Toulon, Stark, Illinois, population schedule, Sheet 3B, Line 66, Balsora Dorvol, digital image; Ancestry.com: accessed 2 Nov 2025, image 6 of 28.
[6] Findagrave.com, Memorial id 64646514, Balsora Williams Dorval (1821-1907).
Stark County [IL] News, Mrs. B. Dorval, 24 Dec 1907, p. 10, col. 6.
[7] Fuller and Holmes, 1671, quoted in Irish Pedigrees, 377; see also Rutty’s History of the Quakers in Ireland (1751), 366.
[8] Newport freeman list, 6 May 1684.
U.S., New England marriages Prior to 1700, Mary Scammon & John Rodman, 25 Oct 1682, digital image; Ancestry.com: accessed 2 Nov 2025, image 647 of 1022. NOTE: 1st wife Christiana Gibson likely did in Barbados.
[9] Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633, 3 vols. (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995), 2:924–26, “Robert Hicks” (origin London; Fortune, 1621; occupation fellmonger; freeman 1633; tax 1639; will 1647; children grouped by marriages; wife Margaret, maiden name unproven).