page_title: Plymouth Colony
section_title: Art, literature, and film
hierarchical_section_title: Plymouth Colony / Legacy / Art, literature, and film
caption_attribution_description: English: Pilgrims landing and settlement at Plymouth, Massachusetts was commemorated with a 6-cent stamp marking on the 350th anniversary, November 21, 1970.
context_page_description: Plymouth Colony was an English colonial venture in America from 1620 to 1691 at a location that had previously been surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement served as the capital of the colony and developed as the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. At its height, Plymouth Colony occupied most of the southeastern portion of Massachusetts.
  Plymouth Colony was founded by a group of Puritan Separatists initially known as the Brownist Emigration, who came to be known as the Pilgrims. It was the second successful colony to be founded by the English in America after Jamestown in Virginia, and it was the first permanent English settlement in the New England region. The colony established a treaty with Wampanoag Chief Massasoit which helped to ensure its success; in this, they were aided by Squanto, a member of the Patuxet tribe. Plymouth played a central role in King Philip's War, one of several Indian Wars, but the colony was ultimately merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony and other territories in 1691 to form the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
  Despite the colony's relatively short existence, Plymouth holds a special role in American history.
context_section_description: The earliest artistic depiction of the Pilgrims was actually done before their arrival in America; Dutch painter Adam Willaerts painted a portrait of their departure from Delfshaven in 1620. The same scene was repainted by Robert Walter Weir in 1844, and hangs in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol building. Numerous other paintings have been created memorializing various scenes from the life of Plymouth Colony, including their landing and the "First Thanksgiving", many of which have been collected by Pilgrim Hall, a museum and historical society founded in 1824 to preserve the history of the Colony.
  Several contemporaneous accounts of life in Plymouth Colony have become both vital primary historical documents and literary classics. Of Plimoth Plantation (1630 and 1651) by William Bradford and Mourt's Relation (1622) by Bradford, Edward Winslow, and others  are both accounts written by Mayflower passengers that provide much of the information which we have today regarding the trans-Atlantic voyage and early years of the settlement.
  Benjamin Church wrote several accounts of King Philip's War, including Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip's War, which remained popular throughout the 18th century. An edition of the work was illustrated by Paul Revere in 1772. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God provides an account of King Philip's War from the perspective of Mary Rowlandson, an Englishwoman who was captured and spent some time in the company of Native Americans during the war. Later works, such as "The Courtship of Miles Standish" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, have provided a romantic and partially fictionalized account of life in Plymouth Colony.
  There are also numerous films about the Pilgrims, including the several film adaptations of "The Courtship of Miles Standish"; the 1952 film Plymouth Adventure starring Spencer Tracy; and Desperate Crossings: The True Story of the Mayflower, a 2006 television documentary produced by the History Channel.
  In 1970, the United States Postal Service issued a three  hundred and fiftieth-year commemorative stamp recognizing the English dissenters first landing at the modern day settlement of Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1620.
caption: New England landing of the Pilgrims in 1620 on a stamp marking its 350th anniversary in 1970
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