Rick Denham’s childhood home in Hallowell is three miles from the site of an outpost in present-day Augusta that historians say sustained the Plymouth Colony, founded by the Pilgrims in 1620.

Decades ago, Denham learned he might have had ancestors aboard the Mayflower, the ship that brought those colonists from Europe to present-day Massachusetts, fleeing religious persecution. Until a few years ago, he wasn’t sure.

Now, he’s proved the link, and he’s more thankful around Thanksgiving, wishing he knew about it as a child.

“It would have made school so much more interesting this time of year,” said Denham, 68, now retired from a career as a respiratory therapist, living in Midland, Texas. “The more I read about the Pilgrims who came over, the more amazed I get.”

It is estimated that there are more than 30 million Mayflower descendants nationwide, a number that represents about 10 percent of Americans.

Denham is one of more than 29,000 members of the Society of Mayflower Descendants – a genealogical membership group with affiliated groups in every state. Maine’s affiliated society has 1,200 members, said Lane Mabbett of Phippsburg, historian for the Maine Mayflower Society.

Mabbett said he has never thought of estimating the total number of Maine descendants. However, 10 percent of Maine’s population would be about 130,000, and Mabbett said that given Maine’s proximity to Plymouth, the state’s concentration of descendants is likely higher than the average state. So 150,000 could be a conservative statewide estimate statewide, Mabbett said.

In Denham’s case, his mother spent years in the 1980s traveling around New England doing research on her family’s lineage, taking copious notes. Denham said then, she mentioned that she found a Mayflower connection. After she died in 2003, he said his brother wanted to put the Mayflower link in her obituary. Denham told him they couldn’t, because they hadn’t verified it.

“He said, ‘You’re the oldest, you prove it,’ ” Denham said.

So he took her notes and said he spent about six years researching and finally verified a connection to Stephen Hopkins, one of 102 Mayflower passengers and one of 41 signers of the Mayflower Compact, the first governing document of the Plymouth Colony.

The passengers arrived in late 1620, finding hardship: Records show that 45 colonists died in the first winter.

But they rallied, and today’s Thanksgiving holiday is traced back to a poorly documented 1621 celebration that the Pilgrims purportedly enjoyed.

That makes Denham proud, and he’s not the only Hallowell native to discover his ancestry recently. In recent years, he reconnected over Facebook with Diane Mallett, who graduated from Hall-Dale in 1965 and moved back to Hallowell from Tennessee in August.

She said Denham’s postings about looking into his lineage motivated her to look into hers and she found what she thinks is a link to Hopkins, as well.

Maine influenced the Plymouth Colony’s later success, according to the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, Mass. By 1625, Plymouth colonists had established a fur-trading operation in what is now Maine, which helped them pay debt back to investors. Likely around 1628, they established Cushnoc, a trading post in what is now Augusta, near Old Fort Western. A rock there commemorates the site today.

“Economically, Maine saved the Pilgrims,” said Mabbett, the Phippsburg historian.

“I love finding out what they had to endure,” Denham said. “It makes it so much more meaningful.”

Staff writer Michael Shepherd can be contacted at 370-7652 or at:

mshepherd@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @mikeshepherdme