Discovery and Distractions

As I researched our family tree over the last year, I have tended to jump around from one family line to another.  One day last summer I decided that it might make more sense to try and complete a line as far back as I could take it and then move to another.  Starting with my grandfather Fred Ayer I moved to his father, Dana Ayer and mother Helen McIntire. (A side note to this, Dan has a song he loves that has a shout out to a McInitre so I thought this was fun that we had a McIntire in the family) Being obviously distracted from the Ayer Line now, I started going back in the McIntire line. Helen's mother and father were Benjamin McIntire and Nancy Helen Small.
I worked my way through their records on Ancestry trying to fill in as much information as I could and then moved on to Benjamin's parents. And I discovered the Benjamin was a III and his father a Jr. When I moved to Benjamin's mother I found her name was Maria Prince.  I continued on locating her parents (so much for staying focused on one line!) Her father was Paul Prince Jr and her mother was Sarah Southworth. This is where things started to get interesting! When I pulled Sarah's information, a link for Mayflower Births and Deaths, Vol. 1 and 2 came up. I was curious what this was and clicked into the link and lo and behold,
I discovered that we were descended from someone on the Mayflower. 
That was a pretty incredible moment for me as a American History lover!  The rest IS history, because I went on to discover numerous connections. Now, I know that eventually I would have made this discovery but my always wandering attention lead me to this pretty quickly. So thank goodness for those small "squirrel" moments in life, you never know where they may lead you!