Genealogy Story - Marrying my cousin

As I alluded to in an earlier post, my wife and I both have roots that go back to the Mayflower and the Pilgrims who came to this country in 1620.  In fact, we are both descended from the same person, making us cousins - in addition to being husband and wife.  This is the story of that connection.

Of the 102 passengers and crew of the Mayflower, only half survived that first winter in Massachusetts.  Among those on the Mayflower were Thomas Rogers and his 17 year old son, Joseph.  The rest of the family had been left behind in England.  Thomas died during that first winter, but Joseph was one of the survivors.  He married around 1632 and had eight children.  Among them were Thomas (b. 1638), and John (b. 1642).

The descendant line from John that led to me was as follows:
- John (1642-1713)
- John (1672-1713)
- Benjamin (1704-1747)
- Benjamin (1738-1824)
- Joseph (1772-1837)
- Benjamin (1814-1875) [not a lot of  ingenuity in naming is there?]
- Mary (1851-1933) - Mary's mother died when she was very young and she then took on the last name of Drake after her adoptive family (that's another story), she married Lawrence Northrop
- Caroline Northrup (1872-1935) - married Maurice Levy
- Vera Levy (1895-1963) - married Erskine Russell
- Vernon Russell (1930-2006)
- Alan Russell (1948-)

Meanwhile, the descendant line from Thomas to my wife was as follows:
- Thomas (1638-1678)
- Eleazar (1673-1739)
- Experience (1707-1750) - married Samuel Totman
- Deborah Totman (1731-1813) - married Moses Barrows
- Malachi Barrows (1760-1802)
- Spencer Barrows (1787-1875)
- Andrew Barrows (1815-1902)
- Abigail Barrows (1841-1920) - married Jonah Dayton Wright
- Frank Wright (1873-1957)
- Mary Ellen Wright (1926-2010) - married Charles VanDeCar
- Donna VanDeCar (1947-)

If you count back, that makes Donna my 10th cousin.  In addition, it makes both of eligible to join the Mayflower Society, as we are descended from the survivors of that brave band of Pilgrims who landed in what is now Plymouth, MA nearly 400 years ago.  Since there are millions of people who can trace their ancestry back to the Pilgrims, we are not interested in joining.  But the fact that we can both trace our ancestry to the same individual is nonetheless interesting.