When Freeman Doane Mayo was scanning Nauset Beach one day in April 1852, his intent was to find wreckage from the shipwreck of the British brig Margaret, which ran aground and had broken up.
What he never counted on was finding someone who would start a long line of descendants that would stretch all across the Lower Cape.
In the surf, Mayo spotted a mast from the Margaret — and on that mast was none other than a 14-year-old boy from Great Yarmouth, England, named John Fulcher.