Monumental task: to find the descendants of the passengers aboard the ship Sea Venture (Wildman surname)

I have the Mayflower Families Vol 6 on Stephen Hopkins if you have questions.

Hi! Saw your post this AM. I am also a descendant of Stephen Hopkins through his daughter Demaris who married Jacob Cooke (son of Francis Cooke another Mayflower passenger) If you want the detail down to me let me know.
Regards
Gary Allen
garylpallen@hotmail.com

Thanks fro your replies and offers...

I am beginning to feel that some of our project here on Geni are like the proverbial telescope that looks to a star so many light years away. I once thought that that star was somehow intimately connected to others, equally distant...... I no longer do.

I say this as a prelude to adding to my original post. We cannot truly wish to find all the descendants of the passengers aboard the ship Sea Venture here do we?
Though,,,,This won't stop us from looking and wondering at the stars, without knowing all their names ;)

“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

Michael,
I don't think it is possible to find all descendants of Stephen Hopkins. Too many lines are broken - lost records, etc.
Eight or more generations back is a long way to trace ancestors. Many of us are just lucky that genealogists have put a lot of effort into the Mayflower, covering five generations since the original passengers, so you only have to connect through about five more generations since.
That can be tricky. When I was young, many people thought that my great-grandfather Jonathan Deaver was the son of Reuben Deaver and Mary Christ Rhodes. They would have missed the Mayflower connection. My grandmother knew better, though, that her grandmother was Affadilla Moody Deaver, who we now know was an underground railroad abolitionist and descendant of six Mayflower passengers.
Grandma didn't know about the Mayflower, but she thought that Reuben was the son of Abraham Lincoln's aunt. You couldn't blame her because to this day, Reuben's mother's gravestone has "Nancy Lincoln" inscribed in big letters. We now know that she was Nancy Ann Lakin (whose family was prominent enough in Western Maryland history).
Think of all the Hopkins descendants who are unaware because of these kinds of mistakes.
And then we have problems with the internet. A couple of years ago, I was smugly confident about my Hopkins heritage until I visited a website called "Pilgrim Hopkins" run by authorities in Stephen's genealogy.
Browsing their Lineage section, I saw a shocking note at the entry for Nicholas Paine and Hannah Higgins. It said that all of Nicholas and Hannah's children were adopted. I had to reconsider my Mayflower connections to Stephen Hopkins, Constance Hopkins, Thomas Rogers, and Joseph Rogers. That note only left me with William and Mary Brewster.
The Thomas Rogers Society website's lineage section had no such note, and Geni had no hint of it, but still I wasn't sure.
The Pilgrim Hopkins website's note has been removed.
http://home.pilgrimhopkins.com/lineageHome.php?pafg06.htm#127

Leo Rogers (not a completely paternal descendant of Thomas)

Leo Rogers:
"I feel your pain." :0
Thanks for the well-considered note.
regards,
~• Mike

Hi, everyone. I am have a story for you.

My daughter started doing her family tree in December. I was recovering from chemo and radiation (I AM FINE!!! but a little braindead)—and offered to help with it, as I was and am the little girl who remembers everyone's birthday. And apparently, everyone I ever met.

Anyway. Her father's family is from Spain, so I had to give up on the beautiful but impossible handwriting and names, and started going up her grandmother's lines. Once I got to the Ring family, it was boo, boom, boom, MAYFLOWER. Stephen Hopkins is her ninth great-grandfather.

My own tree is much more complex—also really focused, for the most part, on the Great Migration. LOTS of people came over. Including my tenth great-grandfather, whom I am reluctant to name because he was a miserable and disgusting person. James Graye Proctor was ALSO on the Sea Venture.

My daughter's TWO great-grandfathers were on that boat, and lived and worked alongside each other on that island for upwards of a year. Well, if Proctor worked at all. He traveled with servants—presumably to have someone nearby to beat to death if the fancy struck him. (He beat two servants to death. One with a rake—but that old guy was "suicidal"! Ask Proctor's neighbors: that's why they testified in court. And the there, a young girl, he had beaten to death with "stout ropes with fishhooks." That silly girl was always trying to run away, so they beat her to death. And then wrapped her in a rug and threw her body behind a woodpile, I think.

It takes fortitude to read these things—along with the records of how many slaves they owned.

Anyway, this story of the two great-grandfathers is great fun to tell—especially when I say, "But wait. There's MORE!" and tell them about John Rolfe's wife and baby boy dying on Bermuda and him going to marry Pocahontas.

It's like the Swiss Family Robinson but less probable.

Oh, and her father and I remain good friends. He is EXACTLY like Stephen Hopkins in one regard: he is impossible to stay mad at. Impossible. Completely charming, golden-hearted, and warm. He's also creative (a nature photographer who produces BEAUTIFUL calendars) and practical—he can build anything. Maybe not a ship, but he could sure help.

We have a wonderful family, and genealogy is the best rehabilitation for chemo brain I could ever desire. I have fallen in love with it, and with finding these stories.

Cheers,y'all.

Oh, it was Stephen Hopkins's daughter, Deborah, that married Andrew Ring—that is the connection to my ex-husband.

I am often bemused by the relationship paths that Geni chooses. Michael, you are my 9th cousin 2X thru the Whitneys and my 9th cousin 1X through Thomas Richardson. And, yet, I have 2 lines from Stephen Hopkins' son, Giles, so apparently we are cousins in 3 lines - at least!

Tana Anderson love your Proctor story!

I wish I could edit my typos. Gah!

Thanks, Erica—there is another story perhaps waiting in the wings.

After Rebecca (Pocahontas) died, he married a woman named Jane. She MIGHT be in my family tree—but I doubt I'm descended from him. I'm not sure I'd want to be. He left his son in England and never saw him again.