1897
Plymouth · General Society
The General Society is formed.
Descendants organize the parent society in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in time for the 277th anniversary of the landing.
A Society of Maryland Descendants
By blood,
by bond,
by covenant.
For three centuries and four winters, the Pilgrims’ voyage has been kept by their descendants — not as relic, but as living thread. From the cabin of the Mayflower in 1620 to a charter signed at the Lord Baltimore Hotel in 1938, the line has held in Maryland.
We are physicians and farmers, mapmakers and mothers — bound together by the names on a manifest, and the company we keep in the years that follow.
1620.
Crossing of the Mayflower
1938.
Maryland Chapter Chartered
54.
Member Societies, Worldwide
102.
Pilgrims Aboard the Voyage
A Line of Descent · An Account
An Account of Our Founding
From a wooden ship to a Baltimore parlor.
The Society honors the men, women, and children who sailed on the Mayflower and signed the Compact at Cape Cod — and the unbroken chain of Maryland families who carry their names today. Membership is by proven descent; what we make of it together is our own.
The Maryland Chapter was chartered on the 4th of March, 1938, at the Lord Baltimore Hotel — ten years a building, and twenty-two stories tall. On the 5th of March, 2011, a plaque and the framed Crossing of the Mayflower by Captain Fritz Briggs was unveiled near the gift-shop entrance, exactly seventy-three years to the date.
In the years since, the Chapter has become a small but durable fellowship: a dinner each spring, a Compact dinner each November, and a quiet labor of genealogy carried on in the corners of the state. We descend from John Howland and Richard Warren, from Francis Cooke and others — and where we descend from, we remember.
· ✦ ·
“The line is the thing; the keeping of it is the calling.”
1620
Cape Cod · November
The Compact is signed.
Forty-one men aboard the Mayflower bind themselves into a civil body politic — the first written framework of self-government in the colonies.
1938
Baltimore · 4 March
Maryland is chartered.
At the Lord Baltimore Hotel, the Maryland Society of Mayflower Descendants receives its charter from the General Society.
Today
Annapolis · Statewide
A small, durable fellowship.
Spring and Compact dinners, scholarship awards, genealogical research, and the slow, careful keeping of records.
On Joining the Society
On Membership & Dues
Take your place at the table.
Annual dues sustain the work of the Chapter — the dinners, the newsletter, the scholarship fund, and the genealogical records that confirm each new line. A small fellowship’s ledger is honest by necessity.
Regular
$75.00
Per Year
For proven descendants of any passenger on the Mayflower’s 1620 voyage. Full voting rights and dining privileges.
Renew or JoinEarly Renewal
$65.00
Paid before April 1
A ten-dollar courtesy to the treasurer for prompt payment of annual dues. The same benefits, the same fellowship.
Pay Early DuesJunior
$50.00
One-Time, until age 25
For the younger relatives of Maryland members — descendants enrolling early, with a single fee good for ten years and more.
Enroll a JuniorFriends
$50.00
One-Time, lifetime
For those without a Pilgrim line but with family or shared interest in our work. A standing seat at the table.
Become a Friend
A pre-application review — $200, or $100 for the relations of current members — precedes the formal filing with the General Society in Plymouth.
Dinners · Lectures · Congress
Of Dinners & Gatherings
What we make of the in-between years.
The Chapter meets twice a year for a long meal: once in the spring, once in November in honor of the Compact. Lectures and special events are added as occasion permits.
19
April 2026
The Spring Dinner
Tom Frank, M.D. — “Medicine in the Plymouth Colony.”
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22
November 2026
The Compact Dinner
Richard Stone — author of Project Mayflower.
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—
By invitation, 2026
New Jersey Society Luncheon
A reciprocal gathering with our neighbors in New Jersey.
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—
Triennial · Plymouth
The General Society Congress
The triennial assembly of the GBOA in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
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Signed at Cape Cod · 11 November 1620
Words signed at Cape Cod
A civil body politick.
Before they came ashore, forty-one men aboard the Mayflower set their hands to a document of one short paragraph. It has carried weight enough for four centuries.
The Compact was signed in the cabin of the ship, on the eleventh day of November, 1620 — off the tip of Cape Cod, in the colder weather of the new world.
Its language is plain. Its work is durable. The descendants of its signers have kept its memory in dinner rooms and parlors for the four hundred and six years that have followed.
— A common cause, kept commonly.Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia — do by these Presents solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation. The Mayflower Compact · 11 November 1620
Annual dues are open until the 1st of April.
Pay early at $65, or at $75 thereafter. The treasurer keeps a quiet ledger and a longer memory.
Pay Annual Dues