ORANGE — Even as children, the Fallon twins were drawn to family history, and its inextricable relationship to American history, while seated at the feet of “Baba” — a poetic polyglot with lively eyes and a lush Slavic accent, according to a press release by Orange writer Ann Reed. Their maternal grandmother’s storytelling repertoire included personal accounts of an American dream abundantly realized alongside their “Gido,” who, too, had immigrated here in the early 20th Century.
But the American story of the paternal side of the family would require a much longer reach back in time for Reed and twin brother Arnold Fallon, a long-time educator. That is, all the way back to the Mayflower. They discovered that they directly descend from multiple Pilgrims who’d landed at Plymouth in 1620.
Shortly before the close of 2020 — the 400th anniversary year of the historic ship’s arrival from England — Reed and Fallon were each welcomed into the General Society of Mayflower Descendants (often referred to as the Mayflower Society), having proven direct descent from passenger Francis Cooke (c. 1583-1663). They plan to gradually submit supplemental applications to establish lineage Fallon says he has traced to additional Mayflower passengers.
Reed says her interests lie in preserving and heeding history as it relates to those individuals who braved a perilous quest for liberty. (Also a Daughter of The American Revolution, Reed had been active in the Athol-based Margery Morton Chapter of the DAR until it sadly disbanded after 94 years, in 2014, amid dwindled membership due to member deaths.)
Little more than half of the Mayflower’s 102 passengers who made the historic voyage survived the barren and bitter first winter following their November arrival in the New World. Cooke lived out his relatively long life at Plymouth, where he served his community in several official capacities. The Mayflower Society was founded in 1897 “to perpetuate the memory of the Pilgrims, to maintain and defend their principles of civil and religious liberty, and to honor their unfailing strength, undying courage and abiding faith, to which they committed their lives,” reads part of the certificate of membership.
Fallon was the one who had traced the family’s paternal bloodlines extensively, even crossing the Atlantic in his genealogical travels over decades and hills of brittle documents. His research has even been credited in the bestseller “The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey Into The Dark Side of The Brain,” by James Fallon.
Published in 2013, acknowledgements include: “My cousins Dave Bohrer and Arnie Fallon, who, over the past 35 years, dug up both the interesting and relevant genealogical information, and then some.” “The Psychopath Inside” includes an intriguing investigation down a bloodline path descending from another distant great-grandfather of the cousins’ — early American settler Thomas Cornell.
Informally, the elder generation cousins, joined by others in their wider brood, have faithfully engaged in the spirited sharing of family tales, memories, history, and capers — distinctly enough, Reed hopes, for their future to hear.