Descendant of Pilgrims says he admires their perseverance in faith

Published: 2004-11-19

BRANDON, Vt. (CNS) -- Growing up in Massachusetts, Michael F. Dwyer thought Thanksgiving was a Catholic holiday because it was celebrated with great fanfare in his Catholic school. And his family attended Mass on Thanksgiving and sang special songs, like "Come Ye Thankful People Come." But after a college assignment led Dwyer to discover he was related to the Pilgrims who founded Plymouth Colony in present-day Massachusetts in 1620, the holiday took on even greater significance, he said. Thanksgiving has its origins in a harvest feast the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians shared in 1621. Dwyer, a Pittsford resident who is a cantor at St. Peter Parish in Rutland, is one of about 600 members of the Vermont Society of Mayflower Descendants founded in 1927. During an interview in his classroom at Otter Valley Union High School in Brandon, where he is head of the social studies department, Dwyer said Catholic and Protestant descendants of the Pilgrims can honor them for what they were: strong in religious conviction and motivated by that sense of genuine religious conviction. He admires them for persevering in their faith, but not for their intolerance.

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