The town of Wareham, Massachusetts, situated directly south of Plymouth Town (in Plymouth County), was created in 1739 from the town of Rochester, directly to the west. Wareham would become home to countless persons of Mayflower descent. The records of the First Church of Wareham are a crucial source of information for Mayflower ancestry, and they comprise the basis for this book. The surviving church records are a mixture of births, marriages, deaths, memberships, and other records. In all, the Smiths refer to nearly 6,000 early settlers of Wareham, whose names are accessible to the researcher in the index at the back of the volume.