Society of Mayflower Descendants
in the State of Arizona
Meetings
Compact Day Meeting - 2009 - Guest Speaker
Paul Stanton Bumpus:
The Society of Mayflower Descendants in the State of Arizona is pleased to welcome Mr. Paul Stanton Bumpus as our guest speaker for the November 22rd, 2009 annual Compact Day Meeting.
Born in Brockton, Plymouth County, Massachusetts, on 18 October 1951, Paul is the youngest of three children of Everett Aliston and Edna Lorraine (Sampson) Bumpus. Both of his parents, and three of his four grandparents, are descendants of passengers of the Mayflower, with only his father’s mother, who is believed to have been of Scotch-Irish heritage, from New Brunswick, Canada, not being of Mayflower descent. His sister Linda Ruth (Milne) MacCallum, and brother Stephen Dexter Bumpus are ten, and four, years older respectively. Paul has proved descent from a total of 22 of the 29 Mayflower passengers who are currently accepted for Society membership. Reared in Whitman, less than 20 miles from the town of Plymouth, Paul attended all twelve grades of school in Whitman schools, graduating from Whitman-Hanson Regional High School in 1969. Entering the U. S. Air Force in the Spring following graduation, he served a four-year commitment to our country, during the Vietnam Era, in West Germany and Texas. It was the years spent in Europe, beginning with the discovery of the library on his Air Force base during the first long, cold, winter months of Northern Germany, which opened his eyes to the life of ideas. This discovery, along with the incredible opportunities for travel throughout Europe, began Paul’s personal odyssey of discovery, and his college years remained highly influenced by those years in Europe.
Upon being honorably discharged at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, at the end of his four years of service in February 1974, and learning of a college about a hundred miles to the southeast of Wichita Falls, he would that Fall begin college life at North Texas State University in Denton, Texas on the GI Bill. Paul received a Bachelor’s Degree from North Texas State University, with a major in Philosophy, and a minor in Biology, in 1979. He would return to the newly named University of North Texas in the mid-1990’s, receiving a Master’s Degree in American Studies in 1997. It was just prior to Paul’s return to college, sometime in 1993, when he first discovered his Mayflower Ancestry through a fortuitous twist of fate. It began with a meeting of a Bumpus cousin in a local used bookstore, in the town where he was born, Brockton, who when finding out that Paul was also a Bumpus, showed him a copy of George Willison’s book “Saints and Strangers” on the shelves of the bookstore. The passengers list of the early Pilgrim ships, including “The Fortune” (1621) are printed there. Being a Bumpus from Plymouth County, this newly met cousin explained, meant that Paul was surely descended from Edward Bompasse, found on the passenger list of that ship which arrived in Plymouth in 1621, almost exactly a year after the Mayflower. Certainly Edward Bumpas, as he was known by his Anglicized named, was one of the “lusty young men of the Fortune” written about by William Bradford in his book on the early years at Plymouth. In the process of trying to establish descent from Edward, and upon first mentioning to his sister what he had learned about the Bumpus ancestry, as coming from Edward, it was then revealed to him by his sister that: “Well, Ma’s descended from Myles Standish and William Bradford, and William Brewster. . .”
The genealogy germ was bred, and Paul’s association with the Mayflower Society began as, during the course of his research his searching brought him to our Library at Plymouth. He would then become, first, a volunteer at the library in 2003, and then in 2005 he was hired by then Historian General, Bette Bradway, as a Verifying Genealogist. In 2006 when the Librarian, Eliana Kimball, retired, Paul was offered the position of Librarian by the new Historian General, Ann Lainhart. Paul was also appointed, about this same time, to the position of Historian for the Mayflower Society in Hawaii, and Historian for the Pilgrim Henry Samson Kindred. Then, something never dreamt of at the start of his personal or genealogical odyssey, Paul was elected to the position of Historian General of the Mayflower Society at the Mayflower Society’s Triennial Congress on September 9, 2008.