Lecture Series
All times listed are in Eastern Standard Time
In 2021, the Mayflower Society launched a very popular Lecture Series covering a variety of Mayflower Pilgrim-related topics including their odyssey, their life and times, their maritime experience and, of course, genealogy!
Please plan to join us for a fun learning experience about the Mayflower Pilgrims and genealogy topics, right from the comfort of your own home.
- Monthly webinar lectures are free and open to the public.
- No pre-registration required.
- Live event links are posted below.
- Webinars are recorded and available on demand.
Missed a lecture? View previously recorded lectures on demand.
2024 Mayflower Society Virtual Program Schedule
October 10TH at 7 PM EST - "Marco Polo" with Laurence Bergreen
Marco Polo opened Asia to European trade, so we’re told, but we generally don’t know much else. Historian Laurence Bergreen remedies that by bolstering Polo’s reputation and arguing for his historical importance. Bergreen has written biographies of Louis Armstrong, Irving Berlin and Ferdinand Magellan, and here he retraces Polo’s steps to Mongolia and China.
Zoom webinar information:
November 7TH at 7 PM EST - “The Electoral College: Why It Endures Despite Two Centuries of Criticism” with Thomas Weaver
Despite the opinion of Alexander Hamilton that the Electoral College was the only part of the Constitution to escape criticism, few clauses in the Constitution have been subjected to more consistent and withering disapproval than the Electoral College. Thomas Weaver will explore the people and events that shaped America’s unique form in choosing a chief executive, telling the story through the eyes of people who lived it—including stories that involve murders, duels, shootouts, corruption, greed, teenage elopement, and a secret midnight ride in the back of a mail carriage to save the Constitution.
Zoom webinar information:
November 14TH at 7 PM est - “The Journey to the Mayflower” with Stephen Tomkins
The sailing of the Mayflower was not just a foundational American event—it was also the culmination of a radical English religious movement. This is the story of that underground church, one of prison and killings, spies and subterfuge, theological controversy and sexual scandal, and the invention of religious freedom.
Stephen Tomkins is a writer, broadcaster, editor and speaker, and the author of seven books.
Zoom webinar information:
November 21st at 7PM EST - “Squanto: A Native Odyssey” WITH Andrew Lipman
American schoolchildren have long learned about Squanto, the welcoming Native who made the First Thanksgiving possible, but his story goes deeper than the holiday legend. Born in the Wampanoag-speaking town of Patuxet in the late 1500s, Squanto was kidnapped in 1614 by an English captain, who took him to Spain. From there, Englishmen brought him to London and Newfoundland before sending him home in 1619, when Squanto discovered that most of Patuxet had died in an epidemic. A year later, the Mayflower colonists arrived at his home and renamed it Plymouth.
Prize-winning historian Andrew Lipman explores the mysteries that still surround Squanto: How did he escape bondage and return home? Why did he help the English after an Englishman enslaved him? Why did he threaten Plymouth’s fragile peace with its neighbors? Was it true that he converted to Christianity on his deathbed? Drawing from a wide range of evidence and newly uncovered sources, Lipman reconstructs Squanto’s upbringing, transatlantic odyssey, career as an interpreter, surprising downfall, and enigmatic death.
Zoom webinar information:
December 4th at 7 PM EST -“Project Mayflower" with Richard Stone
Mayflower II—the replica of the 1620 ship that brought the Pilgrims to America—is viewed by over 2 million people per year. But there is much more to the replica’s story than meets the eye. Project Mayflower recounts the never-before-told story of a grand adventure: how a British World War II veteran named Warwick Charlton created an historically accurate replica, sailed it across the Atlantic Ocean, and presented it as a thank you to his country’s wartime ally.
Zoom webinar information:
2025 Mayflower Society Virtual Program Schedule
January 9TH AT 7pm EST - “Plunder? How Museums Got Their Treasures” - Justin Jacobs
Historian Justin M. Jacobs challenges the widely accepted belief that much of Western museums’ treasures were acquired by imperialist plunder and theft. The account reexamines the allegedly immoral provenance of Western collections, advocating for a nuanced understanding of how artifacts reached Western shores. Jacobs examines the perspectives of Chinese, Egyptian, and other participants in the global antiquities trade over the past two and a half centuries, revealing that Western collectors were often willingly embraced by locals.
Zoom webinar information:
January 16TH AT 3PM EST - “The Mayflower in Britain” - Graham Taylor
The story of the Mayflower from the British point of view, and from the viewpoint of British democracy. The tale usually told is of a romantic departure from Plymouth, Devon, and a romantic arrival in Plymouth, Massachusetts. In fact, the voyage arose out of grim negotiations in London. It was financed and organized by investors in the City of London and its religious element was supplied by an underground church in Southwark, London. It sailed to America probably from Blackwall, in what is now London, and the ship’s crew lived in Rotherhithe—also now London. The ship did not intend to go to Plymouth, Devon, but was forced to call in there for repairs. In America they did not know where to land. Yet the Pilgrims took on board a precious cargo—a democratic spirit from London mellowed by a tolerance learned in Holland. This spirit did not just inspire American democracy but acted as a shining example to those in Britain they left behind. The same communities in London that planned the voyage of the Mayflower generated the English Civil War.
Zoom webinar information:
February 4TH AT 7PM EST - “Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery” WITH Seth Rockman
The industrializing North and the agricultural South—that’s how we have been taught to think about the United States in the early nineteenth century. But in doing so, we overlook the economic ties that held the nation together before the Civil War. We miss slavery’s long reach into small New England communities, just as we fail to see the role of Northern manufacturing in shaping the terrain of human bondage in the South. Using plantation goods—the shirts, hats, hoes, shovels, shoes, axes, and whips made in the North for use in the South—historian Seth Rockman locates the biggest stories in American history in the everyday objects that stitched together the lives and livelihoods of Americans—white and Black, male and female, enslaved and free—across an expanding nation.
Zoom webinar information:
February 20TH AT 7pm EST - “A Grave Mistake? The English Origins of Old Comer Thomas Clarke” WITH Bill Cole
Might Thomas Clarke have been a crewmember of Mayflower’s 1620 voyage to Plymouth? Atop Burial Hill, Clarke’s gravestone was placed in 1697—the cemetery’s oldest one still visible. It has attracted visitors for more than three hundred years. Cole found evidence in England when combined with New England records shows that Thomas Clarke’s traditional origins have been mis-attributed. Cole shares his research findings about Thomas Clarke which includes a story passed down by some descendants that he was a crewmember on Mayflower’s voyage. Do Cole’s new findings make the passed-down family story credible albeit difficult to conclusively prove?
Zoom webinar information:
April 3RD AT 7PM EST - "The Bible: A Global History” - WITH Bruce Gordon
For Christians, the Bible is a book inspired by God. Its eternal words are transmitted across the world by fallible human hands. Following Jesus’s departing instruction to go out into the world, the Bible has been a book in motion from its very beginnings, and every community it has encountered has read, heard, and seen the Bible through its own language and culture.
In “The Bible,” Yale Professor Bruce Gordon tells the astounding story of the Bible’s journey around the globe and across more than two thousand years, showing how it has shaped and been shaped by changing beliefs and believers’ radically different needs.
Breathtakingly global in scope, The Bible tells the story of this sacred book through the stories of its many and diverse human encounters, revealing not a static text but a living, dynamic cultural force.
Zoom webinar information:
June 17th AT 3PM EST - "The Blazing World: Revolutionary england, 1603-1689" - with Jonathan Healey
The seventeenth century was a revolutionary age for the English. It started as they suddenly found themselves ruled by a Scotsman, and it ended in the shadow of an invasion by the Dutch. Under James I, England suffered terrorism and witch panics. Under his son Charles, state and society collapsed into civil war, to be followed by an army coup and regicide. For a short time—for the only time in history—England was a republic. There were bitter struggles over faith and Parliament asserted itself like never before. There were no boundaries to politics. In fiery, plague-ridden London, in coffee shops and alehouses, new ideas were forged that were angry, populist, and almost impossible for monarchs to control.
But the story of this century is less well known than it should be. Myths have grown around key figures. People may know about the Gunpowder Plot and the Great Fire of London, but the Civil War is a half-remembered mystery to many. And yet the seventeenth century has never seemed more relevant. The British constitution is once again being bent and contorted, and there is a clash of ideologies reminiscent of when Roundhead fought Cavalier.
The Blazing World is the story of this strange, twisting, fascinating century. It shows a society in sparkling detail. It was a new world of wealth, creativity, and daring curiosity, but also of greed, pugnacious arrogance, and colonial violence.
Zoom webinar information:
View On Demand Webinars
2024 Mayflower Society Virtual Programs
Families and Freedoms:
Connections Between the
Mayflower and the American Revolution
Presenter: Jonathan Lane
Passcode: C5ui+^!F
Pits, Posts and Palisades:
The Archaeology of Patuxet and the
17th century Plimoth Colony Settlement
Presenter: David Landon
Passcode: Z@gm63EE
Indian Wars of New England
Presenter: Michael Tougias
Passcode: T2qY09&X
Making the Presidency:
John Adams and the Precedents that Forged the Republic” Presenter: Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky
Passcode: N*eRm0x3
D-Day Deceptions
Presenter: Mark Schmidt
Passcode: ^cMdw!8$
2023 Mayflower Society Virtual Programs
The Mayflower and Her Passengers
Presenter: Caleb Johnson
Passcode: 9Zp9K&ac
Jump Starting Your Family History with Familysearch
Presenter: Lynn Turner
Passcode: N2iy*T3v
Bridging the Gap: Getting Around Brick Walls. Looking into Your Genealogical Background
Presenter: Denise Cross
Passcode: 5JKmGCs?
Welcome to the Plymouth Antiquarian Society
Presenter: Anne Mason
Passcode: %u$m2Kfa
Welcome to Plimoth Patuxet
Presenter: Tom Begley
Passcode: TXn3w=B.
The Virginia Venture: American Colonization and English Society 1580-1660
Presenter: Misha Ewen
Passcode: V6Zq.PKv
The Voyage of Mayflower 400
Presenter: Brett Phaneuf
Passcode: 36&K+PG%
Mutinous Women
Presenter: Joan DeJean
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Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History
Presenter: Richard Thompson Ford
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The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World
Presenter: Virginia Postrel
Passcode: nkSG^7h3
2022 Mayflower Society Virtual Programs
Beefing Up an Ancestor’s Timeline
Presenter: Jeanette Sheliga
Presenter: Bonnie Wade Mucia
Passcode: m3cL^zZC
Presenter: Mark Schmidt
Passcode: peNr@7j!
Presenter: Beth Finch McCarthy
Passcode: !Z#9hWdC
Presenter: Nancy Rubin Stuart
Passcode: %dLU$h17
Presenters: Mike Terry, Susan Abanor and Kenneth Whittemore
Passcode: ajI2.8wq
2021 Mayflower Society Virtual Programs
Made in America
Presenter: James W. Baker
Passcode: W?=YE77$
The Peregrine White Webinar
Presenter: Stephen C. O’Neill
Passcode: X&F9Sm5$