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The Pilgrims' Life in the New World | edHelper.com

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https://www.history.com/topics/colonial-america/pilgrims

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Pilgrims Before the Mayflower

In 1608, a congregation of disgruntled English Protestants from the village of Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, left England and moved to Leyden, a town in Holland. These "Separatists" did not want to pledge allegiance to the Church of England, which they believed was nearly as corrupt and idolatrous as the Catholic Church it had replaced, any longer. (They were not the same as the Puritans, who had many of the same objections to the English church but wanted to reform it from within.) The Separatists hoped that in Holland, they would be free to worship as they liked

Did you know? The Separatists who founded the Plymouth Colony referred to themselves as "Saints," not "Pilgrims." The use of the word "Pilgrim" to describe this group did not become common until the colony's bicentennial.

In fact, the Separatists, or "Saints," as they called themselves, did find religious freedom in Holland, but they also found a secular life that was more difficult to navigate than they'd anticipated. For one thing, Dutch craft guilds excluded the migrants, so they were relegated to menial, low-paying jobs.

Even worse was Holland's easygoing, cosmopolitan atmosphere, which proved alarmingly seductive to some of the Saints' children. (These young people were "drawn away," Separatist leader William Bradford wrote, "by evill [sic] example into extravagance and dangerous courses.") For the strict, devout Separatists, this was the last straw. They decided to move again, this time to a place without government interference or worldly distraction: the "New World" across the Atlantic Ocean.

The Mayflower Journey

First, the Separatists returned to London to get organized. A prominent merchant agreed to advance the money for their journey. The Virginia Company gave them permission to establish a settlement, or "plantation," on the East Coast between 38 and 41 degrees north latitude (roughly between the Chesapeake Bay and the mouth of the Hudson River). And the King of England gave them permission to leave the Church of England, "provided they carried themselves peaceably."

In August 1620, a group of about 40 Saints joined a much larger group of (comparatively) secular colonists-"Strangers," to the Saints-and set sail from Southampton, England on two merchant ships: the Mayflower and the Speedwell. The Speedwell began to leak almost immediately, however, and the ships headed back to port in Plymouth. The travelers squeezed themselves and their belongings onto the Mayflower, a cargo ship about 80 feet long and 24 feet wide and capable of carrying 180 tons of cargo. The Mayflower set sail once again under the direction of Captain Christopher Jones.

Because of the delay caused by the leaky Speedwell, the Mayflower had to cross the Atlantic at the height of storm season. As a result, the journey was horribly unpleasant. Many of the passengers were so seasick they could scarcely get up, and the waves were so rough that one "Stranger" was swept overboard. (It was "the just hand of God upon him," Bradford wrote later, for the young sailor had been "a proud and very profane yonge man.")

The Mayflower Compact

After sixty-six days, or roughly two miserable months at sea, the ship finally reached the New World. There, the Mayflower's passengers found an abandoned Indian village and not much else. They also found that they were in the wrong place: Cape Cod was located at 42 degrees north latitude, well north of the Virginia Company's territory. Technically, the Mayflower colonists had no right to be there at all.

In order to establish themselves as a legitimate colony ("Plymouth," named after the English port from which they had departed) under these dubious circumstances, 41 of the Saints and Strangers drafted and signed a document they called the Mayflower Compact. This Compact promised to create a "civil Body Politick" governed by elected officials and "just and equal laws." It also swore allegiance to the English king. It was the first document to establish self-government in the New World and this early attempt at democracy set the stage for future colonists seeking independence from the British.

The First Thanksgiving

The colonists spent the first winter living onboard the Mayflower. Only 53 passengers and half the crew survived. Women were particularly hard hit; of the 19 women who had boarded the Mayflower, only five survived the cold New England winter, confined to the ship where disease and cold were rampant. The Mayflower sailed back to England in April 1621, and once the group moved ashore, the colonists faced even more challenges.

During their first winter in America, more than half of the Plymouth colonists died from malnutrition, disease and exposure to the harsh New England weather. In fact, without the help of the area's native people, it is likely that none of the colonists would have survived. An English-speaking Abenaki named Samoset helped the colonists form an alliance with the local Wampanoags, who taught them how to hunt local animals, gather shellfish and grow corn, beans and squash.

At the end of the next summer, the Plymouth colonists celebrated their first successful harvest with a three-day festival of thanksgiving. We still commemorate this feast and remember it as the first Thanksgiving, though it did not occur on the fourth Thursday in November like it does today, but sometime between late September and mid November 1621. The colonists were outnumbered two to one by their guests. Attendee Edward Winslow noted there were "many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men."

Plymouth Colony

Eventually, the Plymouth colonists were absorbed into the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony. Still, the Mayflower Saints and their descendants remained convinced that they alone had been specially chosen by God to act as a beacon for Christians around the world. "As one small candle may light a thousand," Bradford wrote, "so the light here kindled hath shone to many, yea in some sort to our whole nation."

Today, visitors wishing to see Plymouth Colony as it appeared during the time of the Mayflower can witness reenactments of the first Thanksgiving and more at Plymouth Plantation.

Mayflower Descendants

There are an estimated 10 million living Americans and 35 million people around the world who are descended from the original passengers on the Mayflower like Myles Standish, John Alden and William Bradford. include Humphrey Bogart, Julia Child, Norman Rockwell, and presidents John Adams, James Garfield and Zachary Taylor.

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The Mayflower - Ship, Compact & Pilgrims | HISTORY

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The Mayflower was a merchant ship that carried 102 passengers, including nearly 40 Protestant Separatists, on a journey from England to the New World in 1620.

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Check out this site for facts about the Plymouth Colony. Fact File of the Pilgrims, Mayflower and History of the Plymouth Colony. Fast facts about the Plymouth Colony

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A Visit to Plymouth, MA/Interview with Plymouth County Register John Buckley

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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PLYMOUTH COLONY (or Plantation), the second permanent English settlement in North America, was founded in 1620 by settlers including a group of religious dissenters commonly referred to as the Pilgrims. Though theologically very similar to the Puritans who later founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Pilgrims believed that the Church of England could not be reformed. Rather than attempting to purify the church, the Pilgrims desired a total separation.

Settlement, Founding, and Growth

One hundred and twenty-five Pilgrims, some of whom founded Plymouth, first departed England in 1608. English authorities had forced the Pilgrims to halt Separatist worship at Scrooby Manor (their residence in Nottinghamshire, England). Thus, seeking freedom of worship, they left for Holland, first passing through Amsterdam and then settling in Leyden. The Pilgrims did indeed enjoy freedom of worship in Leyden but found Holland an imperfect refuge. Most being farmers, the Pilgrims had difficulty prospering in urban Holland. More importantly, the Pilgrims feared their children were growing up in a morally degenerate atmosphere and were adopting Dutch customs and language. Seeing little chance for establishing a separate, godly society in Holland, and fearing the country's conquest by Catholic Spain, which would surely bring the horrors of the Inquisition, the Pilgrims needed a place where they would be left to worship and live as they chose.

Virginia offered such an opportunity. By 1620 the Virginia Company was in deep financial difficulty. One of many measures designed to shore up the company's financial situation was selling special patents to settlers who desired to establish private plantations within Virginia. Though under Virginia's general domain, the Pilgrims would be allowed to govern themselves. Thomas Weston and a group of London merchants who wanted to enter the colonial trade financed the Pilgrims' expedition. The two parties came to agreement in July 1620, with the Pilgrims and merchants being equal partners.

The Pilgrims sold most of their possessions in Leyden and purchased a ship-the Speedwell-to take them to Southampton, England. Weston hired another ship-the Mayflower-to join the Speedwell on the voyage to America. On 22 July 1620 a group of about thirty Pilgrims left Delfshaven, Holland, and arrived in Southampton by month's end. They met the Mayflower, which carried about seventy non-Separatists hired by Weston to journey to America as laborers. After a great deal of trouble with the Speedwell, the ship had to be abandoned, and only the Mayflower left Plymouth, England, for America on 16 September 1620. The overcrowded and poorly provisioned ship carried 101 people (35 from Leyden, 66 from London/Southampton) on a sixty-five day passage. The travelers sighted Cape Cod in November and quickly realized they were not arriving in Virginia. Prevented from turning south by the rocky coast and failing winds, the voyagers agreed to settle in the north. Exploring parties were sent into Plymouth harbor in the first weeks of December, and the Mayflower finally dropped anchor there on 26 December 1620. The weary, sickly passengers gradually came ashore to build what would become Plymouth Colony.

The winter was not particularly harsh, but the voyage left the passengers malnourished and susceptible to disease. Half of the passengers died during the first winter, but the surviving colonists, greatly aided by a plundered supply of Indian corn, were still able to establish a stable settlement. The 1617-1619 contagion brought by English fishermen and traders had greatly weakened the local Indian populace, so the Pilgrims initially faced little threat from native peoples. Plymouth town was, in fact, conveniently built on cleared area that had once been an Indian cornfield. The colonists built two rows of plank houses with enclosed gardens on "Leyden Street." Eventually the governor's house and a wooden stockade were erected. At the hill's summit, the settlers built a flat house to serve as the meeting or worship house.

Migration from England allowed the colony to grow, albeit slowly. In 1624 Plymouth Colony's population stood at 124. By 1637 it reached 549. By 1643 settlers had founded nine additional towns. Compared to its neighbor Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth Colony grew very modestly, reaching a population of only about 7,000 by 1691.

Government and Politics

Since the Pilgrims did not settle in Virginia, their patent was worthless, and they established Plymouth without any legal underpinning. Needing to formulate some kind of legal frame for the colony's government, the Pilgrims crafted the Mayflower Compact, in which the signers agreed to institute colonial self-government. The ship's free adult men signed the compact on 11 November 1620 before the settlers went ashore. They agreed to establish a civil government based upon congregational church compact government, in which freemen elected the governor and his assistants, just as congregational church members chose their own ministers.

As the colonists spread out and founded new towns, the system needed modification. Having meetings of all freemen (most adult men) in Plymouth town to elect officials became impractical. Starting in 1638, assemblies of freemen in individual towns chose deputies for a "General Court." William Bradford dominated political life in Plymouth for a generation, being elected thirty times between 1621 and 1656, but the governor's power lessened as the General Court became a true representative assembly. The General Court became a powerful legislature, with sole authority to levy taxes, declare war, and define voter qualifications. Plymouth, however, never received a legal charter from the crown, and based its existence as a self-governing entity entirely on the Mayflower Compact and the two patents issued by the Council for New England in 1621 and 1630, the latter defining the colony's physical boundaries.

Economy and Society

Plymouth was intended for family settlement and commerce, not staple production or resource extraction like many other colonies. The Pilgrims, bound together by their faith and social covenant, envisioned building a self-sustaining agricultural community that would be a refuge for Separatist dissenters. Thus life in Plymouth revolved around family and religion. Every person had a place and set of duties according to his or her position within the colony and family, and was expected to live according to God's law. Those who did not, or those who openly challenged Separatist religious doctrine, were severely punished or driven from the colony entirely.

Small, family farms remained at the heart of Plymouth's economy throughout its history. Land was divided fairly evenly, with each colonist initially receiving 100 acres of land, with 1,500 acres reserved for common use. Apart from home plots, acreage was initially assigned on a yearly basis. When Pilgrim leaders broke with their London merchant partners in 1627, every man was assigned a permanent, private allotment. The venture's assets and debts were divided among the Pilgrim colonists, with single men receiving one share (twenty acres and livestock) and heads of families receiving one share per family member. Farming proved productive enough to make the colony essentially self-sufficient in food production by 1624. The fur trade (initially run by government monopoly) proved very profitable, and allowed the colony to pay off its debt to the London merchants.

Indian Relations

The colonists were extremely vulnerable during the first winter, and could have been annihilated had the Indians attacked. The first face-to-face meeting, however, was peaceful. In March 1620 an English-speaking Wampanoag-Samoset-approached Plymouth, and provided useful information about local geography and peoples. On 22 March 1621 Pilgrim leaders met with the Wampanoag chief Massasoit, who was in need of allies, and agreed to a mutual defense treaty. By the late 1630s, however,

the New England colonies (especially Massachusetts) were rapidly expanding, and Indian tribes were increasingly encroached upon. English encroachments in the Connecticut River valley led to the bloody Pequot War in 1637. Plymouth officially condemned Massachusetts's harsh actions against the Pequots, but still joined with that colony and Connecticut in forming the New England Confederation in 1643. The three colonies allied for mutual defense in the wake of massive, rumored Indian conspiracies, but were undoubtedly defending their often aggressive expansion at the Indians' expense.

The last great Indian war in seventeenth-century New England- King Philip's or Metacom's War-was a terrible, bloody affair, resulting in attacks on fifty-two English towns. Metacom (called King Philip by the English) was Massasoit's son, and formed a confederation of Indians to destroy English power. His efforts became intensely focused after he was forced to sign a humiliating treaty with Plymouth in 1671. Plymouth's execution of three Wampanoag Indians in 1675 sparked the war, which started with an attack on several Plymouth villages on 25 June 1675. Intercolonial military cooperation prevented Metacom's immediate victory, but disease and food shortages ultimately prevented him from winning a war of attrition. By the summer of 1676, English forces had rounded up and executed the Indian leaders, selling hundreds more into slavery in the West Indies.

Plymouth's Demise

Metacom's War piqued the crown's already growing interest in the New England colonies, and thereafter it set out to bring them directly under royal control. Massachusetts's charter was revoked in 1684, and in 1686 James II consolidated all of New England, plus New York and New Jersey, into one viceroyalty known as the "Dominion of New England." Assemblies were abolished, the mercantile Navigation Acts enforced, and Puritan domination was broken. Hope for self-government was revived in 1688-1689, when Protestant English parliamentarians drove the Catholic James II from power. William III and Mary II (both Protestants) succeeded James by act of Parliament. Massachusetts's leaders followed suit and ousted the Dominion's governor. The new monarchs had no great interest in consolidating the colonies, and thus left the Dominion for dead. The crown issued a new charter for Massachusetts in 1691, but denied the Puritans exclusive government control. Plymouth, by now wholly over-shadowed by Massachusetts, failed to obtain its own charter, and was absorbed by Massachusetts in 1691, thus ending the colony's seventy-year history as an independent province.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bradford, William. History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647. Edited by Samuel Eliot Morison. New York: Russell and Russell, 1968.

Deetz, James, and Patricia Scott Deetz. The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony. New York: W. H. Freeman, 2000.

Demos, John. A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony. 2d ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Johnson, Richard R. Adjustment to Empire: The New England Colonies, 1675-1715. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1981.

Langdon, George D. Pilgrim Colony: A History of New Plymouth, 1620-1691. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1966.

Miller, Perry. The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954.

Nash, Gary. Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America. 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2000.

Shurtleff, Nathaniel B., and David Pulsifer, eds. Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England. 12 vols. 1855. Reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1968.

Vaughan, Alden T. New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, a 1620-1675. 3d ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.

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PLYMOUTH COLONY (or Plantation), the second permanent English settlement in North America, was founded in 1620 by settlers including a group of religious dissenters commonly referred to as the Pilgrims. Though theologically very similar to the Puritans who later founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Pilgrims believed that the Church of England could not be reformed.

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Interesting Facts about the History of Plymouth Colony in Colonial America

*The Mayflower landed at Massachusetts in December, 1620, the survivors founded the PlymouthColony.

*The settlers who founded Plymouth were Pilgrims.

*The Pilgrims were Christians who fled England to have the freedom to practice their religion.

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Plymouth Colony: History and Facts - KidInfo.com

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Kids learn about the history of the Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony of Colonial America including the Mayflower voyage, establishing a Puritan settlement, their leaders, Squanto, the Native Americans, and Thanksgiving.

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Plymouth Colony, America's first permanent Puritan settlement, was established by English Separatist Puritans in December 1620. The Pilgrims left England to seek religious freedom, or simply to find a better life. After a period in Holland, they set sail from Plymouth, England, on Sept. 16, 1620, aboard the , its 102 passengers spending 65 days at sea. Passengers, now known as the Pilgrim Fathers, included leader William Brewster; John Carver, Edward Winslow, and William Bradford, early governors of Plymouth Colony; John Alden, assistant governor; and Myles Standish, a professional soldier and military advisor. The Mayflower dropped anchor near present-day Provincetown on Nov. 21, 1620, and 41 male passengers signed the Mayflower Compact, an agreement to enact "just and equal laws for the general good of the colony." The Pilgrims finally landed at the site of present-day Plymouth, Mass., on Dec. 26, 1620.

By legend the Pilgrims stepped ashore at Plymouth Rock; their records do not mention this landmark. Settlers began erecting buildings and rough shelters for the winter. But harsh climate and illness took their toll. By the end of winter half the colonists had died. The colonists encountered the Indian Samoset, who surprised them by speaking English, learned from English traders on the coast of Maine. Samoset introduced the colonists to Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag Indians, who signed a peace treaty with the Pilgrims. Squanto, another English-speaking Indian, acted as guide and interpreter, and with his help the colonists learned to plant corn, catch fish, and gather fruit. The Pilgrims invited the Indians to celebrate their first harvest in 1621, an event now celebrated as Thanksgiving Day. After Massasoit's death, the Wampanoag joined a tribal coalition to eliminate English settlers, but in the ensuing King Philip's War the Wampanoag were nearly exterminated. The colony gradually grew in size, and the original settlement known as the Plimoth Plantation expanded as settlers built houses in the area. Plymouth Colony retained its independence for over 70 years, and by 1691 its population exceeded 7,000. It was integrated with the Massachusetts Bay Company's much larger colony to establish the royal colony of Massachusetts — now the state of the same name.

Here are some topics to explore that relate to the Plymouth Colony. Looking at the articles, images, and other materials in this Research Starter may give you more ideas. Each topic has one or more articles to start you on your research, but remember that it takes more than one article to make a research paper. Continue your research with our list of articles below.

The reasons the Pilgrims emigrated from England.

The voyage of the Mayflower.

The impact of the colonists on the lives of the Indians.

Daily life at Plimoth Plantation.

William Bradford's History of Plimoth Plantation, 1620-1647.

Plimoth Plantation
www.plimoth.org
An informative Web site with information and many illustrations depicting life in the original Plymouth Colony.

U.S. Gazetteer: Plymouth, Massachusetts
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/gazetteer-tbl?
city=plymouth&state=ma
From this page, either display a map with general census data for this area, or view and download more detailed census tables.

Native Americans and the Environment
cnie.org/NAE
Site contains hundreds of bibliographic entries and links to many Internet resources relating to North American native peoples. Resources are classified by tribal groups. Includes a clickable region map to help readers find information.

WWWVL: American Indians — Cultural Resources
www.hanksville.org/NAresources/indices/NAculture.html
An extensive list of links to Web sites that provide scholarly and commercial resources on North American native peoples.

NativeWeb Home Page
www.nativeweb.org
An excellent site for material on the native peoples of the Western Hemisphere and Australia/Oceania.

NMAI Exhibitions
www.nmai.si.edu
This Smithsonian Institution site contains information about the museum's exhibitions and research as well as an annotated listing of other Native American sites on the Internet.

Ethnologue
www.ethnologue.com
Contains the most authoritative classification database of the world's languages currently available. Searchable by language name, language family, and country; general search option also provided.

Internet History Sourcebooks Project
www.fordham.edu/halsall
From a historian at New York's Fordham Univ., a broad collection of mostly public-domain texts, arranged by sourcebooks on ancient, medieval, and modern history. Other history sourcebooks available here cover regions, religions, science, and women.

The World-Wide Web Virtual Library: Literature
www.internetbookinfo.com
The portion of the World Wide Web Virtual Library devoted to literature, writing, publishing, and related subjects. Comprehensive annotated links to related sites, especially for contemporary writing and publishing.

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This content resource helps students who are beginning to write a research paper. The focus is on Plymouth Colony. Students will find a wealth of information on why Pilgrims emigrated from England and how they affected the lives of Indians. A glossary of topics and terms makes this a great research starter.

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.