The Pilgrims - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com Google The Mayflower Voyage The group that set out from Plymouth, in southwestern England, in September 1620 included 35 members of a radical Puritan faction known as the English Separatist Church. In 1607, after illegally breaking from the Church of England, the Separatists settled in the Netherlands, first in Amsterdam and later in the town of Leiden, where they remained for the next decade under the relatively lenient Dutch laws. Due to economic difficulties, as well as fears that they would lose their English language and heritage, they began to make plans to settle in the New World. Their intended destination was a region near the Hudson River, which at the time was thought to be part of the already established colony of Virginia . In 1620, the would-be settlers joined a London stock company that would finance their trip aboard the Mayflower, a three-masted merchant ship, in 1620. A smaller vessel, the Speedwell, had initially accompanied the Mayflower and carried some of the travelers, but it proved unseaworthy and was forced to return to port by September. Did You Know?

Bradford and the other Plymouth settlers were not originally known as Pilgrims, but as "Old Comers." This changed after the discovery of a manuscript by Bradford in which he called the settlers who left Holland "saints" and "pilgrimes." In 1820, at a bicentennial celebration of the colony's founding, the orator Daniel Webster referred to "Pilgrim Fathers," and the term stuck. Some of the most notable passengers on the Mayflower included Myles Standish, a professional soldier who would become the military leader of the new colony; and William Bradford , a leader of the Separatist congregation who wrote the still-classic account of the Mayflower voyage and the founding of Plymouth Colony . While still on board the ship, a group of 41 men signed the so-called Mayflower Compact , in which they agreed to join together in a “civil body politic.” This document would become the foundation of the new colony’s government. Settling at Plymouth Rough seas and storms prevented the Mayflower from reaching their initial destination, and after a voyage of 65 days the ship reached the shores of Cape Cod, anchoring on the site of Provincetown Harbor in mid-November.

After sending an exploring party ashore, the Mayflower landed at what they would call Plymouth Harbor, on the western side of Cape Cod Bay, in mid-December. During the next several months, the settlers lived mostly on the Mayflower and ferried back and forth from shore to build their new storage and living quarters. The settlement’s first fort and watchtower was built on what is now known as Burial Hill (the area contains the graves of Bradford and other original settlers). More than half of the English settlers died during that first winter, as a result of poor nutrition and housing that proved inadequate in the harsh weather. Leaders such as Bradford, Standish, John Carver, William Brewster and Edward Winslow played important roles in keeping the remaining settlers together. In April 1621, after the death of the settlement’s first governor, John Carver, Bradford was unanimously chosen to hold that position; he would be reelected 30 times and served as governor of Plymouth for all but five years until 1656.

Relations with Native Americans The native inhabitants of the region around Plymouth Colony were the various tribes of the Wampanoag people, who had lived there for some 10,000 years before the Europeans arrived. Soon after the Pilgrims built their settlement, they came into contact with Tisquantum, or Squanto, an English-speaking Native American. Squanto was a member of the Pawtuxet tribe (from present-day Massachusetts and Rhode Island ) who had been seized by the explorer John Smith’s men in 1614-15. Meant for slavery, he somehow managed to escape to England, and returned to his native land to find most of his tribe had died of plague. In addition to interpreting and mediating between the colonial leaders and Native American chiefs (including Massasoit, chief of the Pokanoket), Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to plant corn, which became an important crop, as well as where to fish and hunt beaver. In the fall of 1621, the Pilgrims famously shared a harvest feast with the Pokanokets; the meal is now considered the basis for the Thanksgiving holiday.

After attempts to increase his own power by turning the Pilgrims against Massasoit, Squanto died in 1622, while serving as Bradford’s guide on an expedition around Cape Cod. Other tribes, such as the Massachusetts and Narragansetts, were not so well disposed towards European settlers, and Massasoit’s alliance with the Pilgrims disrupted relations among Native American peoples in the region. Over the next decades, relations between settlers and Native Americans deteriorated as the former group occupied more and more land. By the time William Bradford died in 1657, he had already expressed anxiety that New England would soon be torn apart by violence. In 1675, Bradford’s predictions came true, in the form of King Philip’s War. (Philip was the English name of Metacomet, the son of Massasoit and leader of the Pokanokets since the early 1660s.) That conflict left some 5,000 inhabitants of New England dead, three quarters of those Native Americans. In terms of percentage of population killed, King Philip’s War was more than twice as costly as the American Civil War and seven times more so than the American Revolution .

The Pilgrim Legacy in New England Repressive policies toward religious nonconformists in England under King James I and his successor, Charles I, had driven many men and women to follow the Pilgrims’ path to the New World. Three more ships traveled to Plymouth after the Mayflower, including the Fortune (1621), the Anne and the Little James (both 1623). In 1630, a group of some 1,000 Puritan refugees under Governor John Winthrop settled in Massachusetts according to a charter obtained from King Charles I by the Massachusetts Bay Company. Winthrop soon established Boston as the capital of Massachusetts Bay Colony, which would become the most populous and prosperous colony in the region. Compared with later groups who founded colonies in New England, such as the Puritans, the Pilgrims of Plymouth failed to achieve lasting economic success. After the early 1630s, some prominent members of the original group, including Brewster, Winslow and Standish, left the colony to found their own communities. The cost of fighting King Philip’s War further damaged the colony’s struggling economy.

Less than a decade after the war King James II appointed a colonial governor to rule over New England, and in 1692, Plymouth was absorbed into the larger entity of Massachusetts. Bradford and the other Plymouth settlers were not originally known as Pilgrims, but as “Old Comers.” This changed after the discovery of a manuscript by Bradford in which he called the settlers who left Holland “saints” and “pilgrimes.” In 1820, at a bicentennial celebration of the colony’s founding, the orator Daniel Webster referred to “Pilgrim Fathers,” and the term stuck. Tags The Mayflower - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com Google 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 (they called themselves “Saints”) 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 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 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. The travelers squeezed themselves and their belongings onto the Mayflower and set sail once again. 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 and drowned. (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 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.

Plymouth Colony and the First Thanksgiving The colonists spent the first winter, which only 53 passengers and half the crew survived, living onboard the Mayflower. (The Mayflower sailed back to England in April 1621.) Once they 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 Pawtuxet 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 today. 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.” Tags America's First True "Pilgrims" | History | Smithsonian Contact Privacy Policy Terms of Use America's First True "Pilgrims" An excerpt from Kenneth C. Davis's new book explains they arrived half a century before the Mayflower reached Plymouth Rock Fort Matanzas, about fifty feet long on each side, was constructed of coquina, a local stone formed from clam shells and quarried from a nearby island. (Courtesy of National Park Service) By Kenneth C. Davis smithsonian.com May 22, 2008 The first Pilgrims to reach America seeking religious freedom were English and settled in Massachusetts. Right? Well, not so fast. Some fifty years before the Mayflower left port, a band of French colonists came to the New World. Like the later English Pilgrims, these Protestants were victims of religious wars, raging across France and much of Europe. And like those later Pilgrims, they too wanted religious freedom and the chance for a new life.

But they also wanted to attack Spanish treasure ships sailing back from the Americas.Their story is at the heart of the following excerpt from America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation. It is a story of America's birth and baptism in a religious bloodbath. A few miles south of St. Augustine sits Fort Mantanzas (the word is Spanish for "slaughters"). Now a national monument, the place reveals the "hidden history" behind America's true "first pilgrims," an episode that speaks volumes about the European arrival in the Americas and the most untidy religious struggles that shaped the nation. St. Augustine, Florida — September 1565 It was a storm-dark night in late summer as Admiral Pedro Menéndez pressed his army of 500 infantrymen up Florida's Atlantic Coast with a Crusader's fervor.

Lashed by hurricane winds and sheets of driving rain, these 16th-century Spanish shock troops slogged through the tropical downpour in their heavy armor, carrying pikes, broadswords and the "harquebus," a primitive, front-loading musket which had been used with devastating effect by the conquistador armies of Cortés and Pizarro in Mexico and Peru. Each man also carried a twelve-pound sack of bread and a bottle of wine. Guided by friendly Timucuan tribesmen, the Spanish assault force had spent two difficult days negotiating the treacherous 38-mile trek from St. Augustine, their recently established settlement further down the coast. Slowed by knee-deep muck that sucked at their boots, they had been forced to cross rain-swollen rivers, home to the man-eating monsters and flying fish of legend. Wet, tired and miserable, they were far from home in a land that had completely swallowed two previous Spanish armies—conquistadors who themselves had been conquered by tropical diseases, starvation and hostile native warriors. But Admiral Menéndez was undeterred.

Far more at home on sea than leading infantry, Admiral Menéndez drove his men with such ferocity because he was gambling—throwing the dice that he could reach the enemy before they struck him. His objective was the French settlement of Fort Caroline, France's first foothold in the Americas, located near present-day Jacksonville, on what the French called the River of May. On this pitch-black night, the small, triangular, wood-palisaded fort was occupied by a few hundred men, women and children. They were France's first colonists in the New World—and the true first "Pilgrims" in America. Attacking before dawn on September 20, 1565 with the frenzy of holy warriors, the Spanish easily overwhelmed Fort Caroline. With information provided by a French turncoat, the battle-tested Spanish soldiers used ladders to quickly mount the fort's wooden walls. Inside the settlement, the sleeping Frenchmen—most of them farmers or laborers rather than soldiers—were caught off-guard, convinced that no attack could possibly come in the midst of such a terrible storm. But they had fatally miscalculated.

The veteran Spanish harquebusiers swept in on the nightshirted and naked Frenchmen who leapt from their beds and grabbed futilely for weapons. Their attempts to mount any real defense were hopeless. The battle lasted less than an hour. Although some of the French defenders managed to escape the carnage, 132 soldiers and civilians were killed in the fighting in the small fort. The Spanish suffered no losses and only a single man was wounded. The forty or so French survivors fortunate enough to reach the safety of some boats anchored nearby, watched helplessly as Spanish soldiers flicked the eyeballs of the French dead with the points of their daggers. The shaken survivors then scuttled one of their boats and sailed the other two back to France. America's Hidden History book cover (Smithsonian Books) Fort Matanzas, about fifty feet long on each side, was constructed of coquina, a local stone formed from clam shells and quarried from a nearby island. (courtesy of National Park Service) Fort Caroline, the small, triangular, wood-palisaded fort that was occupied by a few hundred men, women and children when attacked by the Spanish. (courtesy of National Park Service) Author Kenneth C.

Davis (Nina Subin) The handful of Fort Caroline's defenders who were not lucky enough to escape were quickly rounded up by the Spanish. About fifty women and children were also taken captive, later to be shipped to Puerto Rico. The men were hung without hesitation. Above the dead men, the victorious Admiral Menéndez placed a sign reading, "I do this, not as to Frenchmen, but as to Lutherans." Renaming the captured French settlement San Mateo (St. Matthew) and its river San Juan (St. John's), Menéndez later reported to Spain's King Philip II that he had taken care of the "evil Lutheran sect." Victims of the political and religious wars raging across Europe, the ill-fated inhabitants of Fort Caroline were not "Lutherans" at all. For the most part, they were Huguenots, French Protestants who followed the teachings of John Calvin, the French-born Protestant theologian. Having built and settled Fort Caroline more than a year earlier, these French colonists had been left all but defenseless by the questionable decision of one of their leaders, Jean Ribault.

An experienced sea captain, Ribault had sailed off from Fort Caroline a few days earlier with between five and six hundred men aboard his flagship, the Trinité, and three other galleons. Against the advice of René de Laudonniére, his fellow commander at Fort Caroline, Ribault planned to strike the new Spanish settlement before the recently arrived Spanish could establish their defenses. Unfortunately for Ribault and his shipmates, as well as those left behind at Fort Caroline, the hurricane that slowed Admiral Menéndez and his army also ripped into the small French flotilla, scattering and grounding most of the ships, sending hundreds of men to their deaths. According to René de Laudonniére, it was, "the worst weather ever seen on this coast." Unaware that Fort Caroline had fallen, groups of French survivors of the storm-savaged fleet came ashore near present-day Daytona Beach and Cape Canaveral. Trudging north, they were spotted by Indians who alerted Menéndez. The bedraggled Frenchmen were met and captured by Spanish troops at a coastal inlet about 17 miles south of St. Augustine on September 29, 1565.

Expecting to be imprisoned or perhaps ransomed, the exhausted and hungry Frenchmen surrendered without a fight. They were ferried across the inlet to a group of dunes where they were fed what proved to be a last meal. At the Admiral's orders, between 111 and 200 of the French captives—documents differ on the exact number—were put to death. In his own report to King Philip, Admiral Menéndez wrote matter-of-factly, if not proudly, "I caused their hands to be tied behind them, and put them to the knife." Sixteen of the company were allowed to live—self-professed Catholics who were spared at the behest of the priest, who reported, "All the rest died for being Lutherans and against our Holy Catholic Faith." Twelve days later, on October 11, the remaining French survivors, including Captain Jean Ribault, whose Trinité had been beached further south, straggled north to the same inlet. Met by Menéndez and ignorant of their countrymen's fates, they too surrendered to the Spanish.

A handful escaped in the night, but on the next morning, 134 more French captives were ferried across the same inlet and executed; once again, approximately a dozen were spared. Those who escaped death had either professed to be Catholic, hastily agreed to convert or possessed some skills that Admiral Menéndez thought might be useful in settling St. Augustine—the first permanent European settlement in the future United States, born and baptized in a religious bloodbath. Although Jean Ribault offered Menéndez a large ransom to secure his safe return to France, the Spanish Admiral refused. Ribault suffered the same fate as his men. Following Ribault's execution, the French leader's beard and a piece of his skin were sent to King Philip II. His head was cut into four parts, set on pikes and displayed in St. Augustine. Reporting back to King Philip II, Admiral Menéndez wrote, "I think it great good fortune that this man be dead, for the King of France could accomplish more with him and fifty thousand ducats than with other men and five hundred thousand ducats; and he could do more in one year, than another in ten . . . ." Just south of modern St.

Augustine, hidden off the well-worn tourist path of t-shirt stands, sprawling condos and beach-front hotels, stands a rather inconspicuous National Monument called Fort Matanzas. Accessible by a short ferry ride across a small river, it was built by the Spanish in 1742 to protect St. Augustine from surprise attack. Fort Matanzas is more a large guardhouse than full-fledged fort. The modest structure, about fifty feet long on each side, was constructed of coquina, a local stone formed from clam shells and quarried from a nearby island. Tourists who come across the simple tower certainly find it far less impressive than the formidable Castillo de San Marco, the star-shaped citadel that dominates St. Augustine's historic downtown. Unlike other Spanish sites in Florida named for Catholic saints or holy days, the fort's name comes from the Spanish word, matanzas, for "killings" or "slaughters." Fort Matanzas stands near the site of the grim massacre of the few hundred luckless French soldiers in an undeclared war of religious animosity.

This largely unremarked atrocity from America's distant past was one small piece of the much larger struggle for the future of North America among contending European powers. The notion of Spaniards fighting Frenchmen in Florida four decades before England established its first permanent settlement in America, and half a century before the Pilgrims sailed, is an unexpected notion to those accustomed to the familiar legends of Jamestown and Plymouth. The fact that these first settlers were Huguenots dispatched to establish a colony in America in 1564, and motivated by the same sort of religious persecution that later drove the Pilgrims from England, may be equally surprising. That the mass execution of hundreds of French Protestants by Spanish Catholics could be mostly overlooked may be more surprising still. But this salient story speaks volumes about the rapacious quest for new territory and brutal religious warfare that characterized the European arrival in the future America. Excerpted from America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation, by Kenneth C. Davis. Copyright(c) 2008 by Kenneth C. Davis. By permission of Smithsonian Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Like this article?

The Story of the Pilgrims III: The Crossing to America The Story of the Pilgrims III: The Crossing to America The Pilgrims sailed first to Southampton, England, where they were to take on the Strangers, other Separatists from the Scrooby congregation who had stayed in England (this may be where Mills ancestors William White, Susanna Fuller White, and their son Resolved joined the party), and load supplies. The Mayflower joined them at this port. At this point it was determined they were £100 short. Weston wanted the terms of their contract changed, but the Pilgrims objected, saying they could not agree to any changes without the input and consent of the Holland congregation. Weston flew into a rage, told them they were on their own, and walked off. The Pilgrims, in desperation, sold off some of their goods in order to raise money. After many delays, the two ships finally set sail for America. However, the captain of the Speedwell soon signalled his ship was taking on water and they had to return to port and wait for the expensive repairs to take place.

Once again they started out, but after getting into the Atlantic ocean the Speedwell again signalled it was in danger. The ships sailed back to Plymouth, where the captain of the Speedwell pronounced it unseaworthy. (Bradford and others believed the captain didn't want to take the risk of the ocean crossing and then starving with the colonists once they arrived, and so faked the leaking. The Speedwell later "made many voyagesï¿½to the great profit of her owners," so Bradford's assumption may have been correct.) By now the Pilgrims were very distressed at the many obstacles they faced. It was September, they had very little money and had borrowed far more than they had ever expected, and now had to choose who would go on to America and who would stay behind. Some of the Speedwell's passengers transferred to the Mayflower, and on 06 September 1620 the ship was finally underway. The Mayflower carried 102 passengers and about 40 crew members crammed into a 150-foot ship. In addition, passengers brought furniture, books, clothing, food and drink for the crossing, seeds, livestock, and even a printing press. It was a very tight fit.

(The Pilgrims were eventually to live on board the Mayflower for 8 months.) The crossing was as bad as had been feared. Many storms shook the ship. Back in Holland, William Brewster (an elder of the church and Bradford's mentor) had been hunted down by English authorities for printing books critical of the Church of England and King James. The authorities did not find Brewster, who was in hiding, but smashed the fonts for his printing press so he could not do any more printing. Now, as the Mayflower was tossed in the ocean, her main beam began to crack. The giant screw from Brewster's press was fitted into position under the beam and bolstered it, keeping the ship from cracking apart! (Bradford had brought the press with him to Holland when he escaped England.) John Howland, a servant of John Carver, was swept overboard in a storm. Miraculously, he was caught in a halyard underwater and was dragged back onto the ship before he drowned.

Bradford makes frequent mention of the importance of the Pilgrims' faith in helping them through their many trials, and it is not hard to see how this small band of faithful would need to rely on their god and each other to survive such harrowing times. Who were the Pilgrims? | Plimoth Plantation Who were the Pilgrims? Who were the Pilgrims? Who were the Pilgrims? The people we know as Pilgrims have become so surrounded by legend that we are tempted to forget that they were real people. Against great odds, they made the famous 1620 voyage aboard the ship Mayflower and founded Plymouth Colony, but they were also ordinary English men and women. To understand them, it is important that we look beyond the legend. This story will help you get to know these people, now known as the Pilgrims, through their first years in New England. England was a Roman Catholic nation until 1534, when King Henry VIII (reigned 1509-1547) declared himself head of a new national church called the Church of England.

Although he and his daughter, Queen Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603), changed some things that made the Church of England different from the Roman Catholic Church, a few people felt that the new Church retained too many practices of the Roman Church. They called for a return to a simpler faith and less structured forms of worship. In short, they wanted to return to worshipping in the way the early Christians had. Because these people wanted to purify the church, they came to be known as “Puritans.” Another group, considered very radical, went even further. They thought the new Church of England was beyond reform. Called “Separatists,” they demanded the formation of new, separate church congregations. This opinion was very dangerous; in England in the 1600s, it was illegal to be part of any church other than the Church of England. The Separatist church congregation that established Plymouth Colony in New England was originally centered around the town of Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, England. Members included the young William Bradford and William Brewster. Like others who refused to follow the Church of England’s teachings, some of them were harassed, fined or even sent to jail.

When they felt they could no longer suffer these difficulties in England, they chose to flee to the Dutch Netherlands. There, they could practice their own religion without fear of persecution from the English government or its church. The Pilgrims in Holland (the Netherlands) Although they had religious freedom, life in the Netherlands was not easy. The Separatists had to leave their homeland and friends to live in a foreign country without a clear idea of how they would support themselves. The congregation stayed briefly in Amsterdam and then moved to the city of Leiden. There they remained for the next 11 or 12 years. Most found work in the cloth trades, while others were carpenters, tailors and printers. Their lives required hard work. Even young children had to work. Some older children were tempted by the Dutch culture and left their families to become soldiers and sailors. Their parents feared that they would lose their identity as English people. To make matters worse, the congregation worried that another war might break out between the Dutch and Spanish. They decided to move again. The Move to America After careful thought, the congregation decided to leave Holland to establish a farming village in the northern part of the Virginia Colony.

At that time, Virginia extended from Jamestown in the south to the mouth of the Hudson River in the north, so the Pilgrims planned to settle near present-day New York City. There they hoped to live under the English government, but they would worship in their own, separate church. Because their own money wasn’t enough to establish their village, they entered into an agreement with financial investors. The company of investors would provide passage for the colonists and supply them with tools, clothing and other supplies. The colonists in turn would work for the company, sending natural resources such as fish, timber and furs back to England. All assets, including the land and the Pilgrims’ houses, would belong to the company until the end of seven years when all of it would be divided among each of the investors and colonists. The colonists and investors had many disagreements, but eventually the Pilgrims were able to leave Europe for America. The entire congregation could not come to America together. Those who could settle their affairs in Leiden went first while the greater number, including their pastor John Robinson, remained behind. The congregation purchased a small ship, Speedwell, to transport them across the sea and to use for fishing and trading in America.

At Southampton, a port in England, they were joined by a group of English colonists who had been gathered by the investors. Speedwell and Mayflower – a ship rented by the investors – departed for America together. After twice turning back to England because Speedwell leaked, they were forced to leave the ship. As a result, many families were divided when some passengers had to be turned back for lack of space. A month after first leaving England, on September 6, 1620, Mayflower set out alone with 102 passengers. For more information on the voyage of Mayflower and the Mayflower Compact, please visit Mayflower: The Journey, the People, the Ship and the Mayflower Compact . Arrival at Plymouth Mayflower arrived in New England on November 11, 1620 after a voyage of 66 days. Although the Pilgrims had originally intended to settle near the Hudson River in New York, dangerous shoals and poor winds forced the ship to seek shelter at Cape Cod. Because it was so late in the year and travel around Cape Cod was proving difficult, the passengers decided not to sail further and to remain in New England.

It was here, in Cape Cod Bay, that most of the adult men on the ship signed the document that we know as the Mayflower Compact . It laid the foundation for the community’s government. A party of the most able men began exploring the area to find a suitable place to settle. After several weeks, the exploring party arrived at what appeared to be an abandoned Wampanoag community. The plentiful water supply, good harbor, cleared fields, and location on a hill made the area a favorable place for settlement. Mayflower arrived in Plymouth Harbor on December 16, 1620 and the colonists began building their town. While houses were being built, the group continued to live on the ship. Many of the colonists fell ill. They were probably suffering from scurvy and pneumonia caused by a lack of shelter in the cold, wet weather. Although the Pilgrims were not starving, their sea-diet was very high in salt, which weakened their bodies on the long journey and during that first winter. As many as two or three people died each day during their first two months on land. Only 52 people survived the first year in Plymouth.

When Mayflower left Plymouth on April 5, 1621, she was sailed back to England by only half of her crew. Building a Town & Relationships with Native People Although they occasionally caught glimpses of Native People, it wasn’t until four months after their arrival that the colonists met and communicated with them. In March 1621, they made a treaty of mutual protection with the Pokanoket Wampanoag leader, Ousamequin (also known as Massasoit to the Pilgrims). The treaty had six points. Neither party would harm the other. If anything was stolen, it would be returned and the offending person returned to his own people for punishment. Both sides agreed to leave their weapons behind when meeting, and the two groups would serve as allies in times of war. Squanto, a Wampanoag man who had been taken captive by English sailors and lived for a time in London, came to live with the colonists and instructed them in growing Indian corn. In the fall of 1621, the colonists marked their first harvest with a three-day celebration. Massasoit and 90 of his men joined the English for feasting and entertainment.

In the 1800s this famous celebration became the basis for the story of the First Thanksgiving. Over the next six years, more English colonists arrived and many of the people who had to stay behind in England or Holland when Mayflower left England were able to join their families. By 1627, Plymouth Colony was stable and comfortable. Harvests were good and families were growing. In 1627, about 160 people lived in Plymouth Colony. Why “Pilgrims”? A pilgrim is a person who goes on a long journey often with a religious or moral purpose, and especially to a foreign land. After the Mayflower arrived, the first baby born was a boy. His parents (William and Susannah White) named him Peregrine - a word which means travelling from far away and also means pilgrim. The writer of Mourt's Relation in 1622 refers to the Plymouth Colonists as pilgrims.

Governor William Bradford calls the Plymouth settlers pilgrims when he writes about their departure from Leiden, Holland to come to America: “They knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lifted up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country; and quieted their spirits.” Governor Bradford also wrote a poem in which he refers to himself as a pilgrim. 'Pilgrim' became (by the early 1800s at least) the popular term applied to all the Mayflower passengers - and even to other people arriving in Plymouth in those early years - so that the English people who settled Plymouth in the 1620s are generally called the Pilgrims. Pilgrims facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles about Pilgrims The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright The Columbia University Press Pilgrims, in American history, the group of separatists and other individuals who were the founders of Plymouth Colony. The name Pilgrim Fathers is given to those members who made the first crossing on the Mayflower.

Origins The nucleus of the group came into being in the meetings of a group of Puritans (see Puritanism ) at Scrooby, a village in Nottinghamshire, England. Opposed to the episcopal jurisdiction and the rites and discipline of the Church of England, the group had formed as a separatist church by 1606, with John Robinson eventually becoming their minister. The congregation was composed mainly of farmers and artisans, men of little education or position, although William Brewster , one of their leaders, was a man of some importance in the town and had spent some time at the Univ. of Cambridge. Although not actively persecuted, the group was subjected to ecclesiastical investigation and to the mockery, criticism, and disfavor of their neighbors. Emigration to Holland To avoid contamination of their strict beliefs and to escape the hated church from which they had separated, the sect decided to move to Holland, where other groups had found religious liberty, despite an English law that forbade emigration without royal permission. After several false starts, two of which were frustrated by the law, small groups made their way to the Netherlands in 1607, and by the middle of 1608 most of them had reached Amsterdam.

They went from there to Leiden, where they established themselves as artisans and laborers. Life in Holland was not easy, however, and the immigrants found the presence of radical religious groups there objectionable. Dutch influence also seemed to be altering their English ways, and the prospect of renewed war between the Netherlands and Spain threatened. For these reasons they considered moving to the New World. To the New World In 1617, John Carver and Robert Cushman went to London to make arrangements with the London Company, cautiously negotiating the pledges necessary to satisfy the company, king, and bishops and still keep the religion of the dissenters pure. In 1619 a charter was secured from the company in the name of one John Wincob, but it was never used. The matter lapsed until early in 1620, when Thomas Weston, speaking for a group of London merchants, offered them support and the use of a charter already obtained from the London Company. A joint-stock company to last for seven years was arranged. The congregation voted in favor of the voyage, but only about half of the members decided to go.

A small vessel, the Speedwell, was obtained to carry the Pilgrims to England, where that vessel joined the Mayflower for the trip to America. Difficulties arose, however, over restrictive arrangements included by Weston in the agreement in order to guarantee more strongly the investment by the merchants, and the Pilgrims, unwilling to accept the revised agreement, sailed without reaching a settlement. The Speedwell proved unseaworthy and returned to port; many of the passengers and much of her cargo were crowded on the Mayflower, which set out alone. The Leiden group constituted only 35 of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower; many of the English group gathered for the trip were not even separatists (they were thus called "Strangers" ). Nonetheless, the Leiden group (the "Saints" ) retained control and were the moving force behind the emigration. While most of the Leiden Pilgrims were English, modern scholars have found that several were French-speaking Walloons and one was a Pole. Before landing, an agreement providing for a government by the will of the majority was drawn up and called the Mayflower Compact .

In Dec., 1620, the Mayflower entered Plymouth harbor, where the settlers established the Plymouth Colony . Bibliography See W. Bradford, History of Plimouth Plantation (first pub. 1856); H. M. Dexter, The England and Holland of the Pilgrims (1905); R. G. Usher, The Pilgrims and Their History (1918); G. F. Willison, Saints and Strangers (1945, rev. ed. 1965) and The Pilgrim Reader (1953); S. E. Morison, The Story of the Old Colony of New Plymouth (1956); J. Demos, Little Commonwealth (1970); N. Philbrick, Mayflower (2008); N. Bunker, Making Haste from Babylon (2010). Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. MLA COPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. PILGRIMS PILGRIMS.

At the turn of the seventeenth century, a small group of English separatists sought to practice their religion free from the persecution of Henry VIII. By 1609, the congregation settled near Leiden, Holland. Soon dissatisfied, a small group of them sailed from Plymouth, England, aboard the Mayflower on 16 September 1620, carrying a charter for what would become the first permanent English settlement in North America. These Pilgrims arrived in Provincetown Harbor on Massachusetts Bay on 21 November and soon settled in neighboring Plymouth Harbor. Half the residents died in the first harsh winter, yet the colony grew, and in 1691, was absorbed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. BIBLIOGRAPHY Abrams, Ann Uhry. The Pilgrims and Pocahontas: Rival Myths of American Origins. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999. Bradford, William. Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647: The Complete Text. New York: Knopf, 1963. Dillon, Francis. The Pilgrims.

Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975. Barbara SchwarzWachal Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History COPYRIGHT 2000 The Gale Group Inc. PILGRIMS The Pilgrims were Separatists (Protestants who separated from the Anglican Church to set up their own church). In 1609 they fled their home in Scrooby, England , in search of religious freedom, which they found in Holland. Fearing their children would lose contact with English culture, the group decided to voyage to the New World to establish their own community. In 1620 they arrived on the rocky western shore of Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts. Their trans-Atlantic crossing had taken 66 days aboard the Mayflower. Two babies were born during the passage, bringing the number of settlers to 102—only about 35 were Pilgrims, the rest were merchants. On November 21 the Pilgrims drafted the Mayflower Compact, an agreement by which the 41 signatories (the men aboard the Mayflower ) formed a body politic that was authorized to enact and enforce laws.

Religious leader John Carver (1576–1621) was voted governor. Though their colonial patent from the London Company specified they were to settle in Virginia, they decided to establish their colony at Cape Cod, well outside the company's jurisdiction. By December 25 the Pilgrims had chosen the site for their settlement and began building at New Plymouth. The first year was difficult and the Pilgrims faced many hardships: Thirty-five more colonists arrived aboard the Fortune, and thereby put a strain on already limited resources. Sicknesses such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, and scurvy claimed many lives, including that of Governor Carver; and the merchants in the group challenged the purity of the settlement. Having secured a new patent from the Council of New England in June 1621, the lands of the New Plymouth Colony were held in common by both the Pilgrims and the merchants. But this communal system of agriculture proved unsuccessful and in 1624, William Bradford (1590–1657), who had succeeded Carver as governor, granted each family its own parcel of land.

The Wampanoag Indians, who had previously occupied the land settled by the Pilgrims, proved friendly and were helpful advisers in agricultural matters. In 1626 the Pilgrims bought the merchants' shares, and claimed the colony for themselves. Though they were inexperienced at government before arriving in America and had not been formally educated, the Pilgrims successfully governed themselves according to their religious beliefs; Plymouth Colony remained independent until 1691, when it became part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. See also: Agriculture, Colonies (Proprietary), Massachusetts, Puritans, Virginia Cite this article travel How did the Pilgrims travel to America? The Mayflower II resembles the Mayflower I The English ship the Mayflower carried the Separatist Puritans, later known as Pilgrims, to Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620. The 180-ton vessel was about 12 years old and had been in the wine trade. It was chartered by John Carver, a leader of the Separatist congregation at Leiden, Holland. The ship was made ready at Southampton with a passenger list that included English Separatists and other crew.

These crew members were to be taken along to make money for the London businessmen, who were giving money for the expedition. In the meantime, the Leiden Separatists, who had started the venture, sailed for Southampton on July 22, 1620, with 35 members of the congregation and their leaders, William Bradford and William Brewster, aboard the 60-ton Speedwell. To start on the trip to America,both the Speedwell and the Mayflower, carrying a total of about 120 passengers, sailed from Southampton on August 15,. But they were twice forced back by dangerous leaks on the Speedwell. So it was decided, at the English port of Plymouth, some of the Speedwell's passengers would regroup on the Mayflower, leaving some things behind because there was no room enough for everything. On September 16, 1620, the historic voyage began with only one ship, the Mayflower. This time the Mayflower carried 102 passenger, only 37 of whom were from the Leiden congregation in addition to the crew. The voyage took 65 days, during which two persons died.

A boy, Oceanus Hopkins, was born at sea, and another, Peregrine White, was born as the ship lay at anchor off Cape Cod. The ship came insight of Cape Cod on November 19 and sailed south. The colonists had been granted territory in Virginia but probably headed for a planned stop near the mouth of the Hudson River. The Mayflower turned back, however, and dropped anchor at Provincetown on November 21. That day 41 men signed the so-called Mayflower Compact. This agreement was thought necessary because there were rumors that some of the non-Separatists, called "Stranger,"among the passengers would defy the Pilgrims if they landed in a place other than that specified in the land grant they had received from the London Company. The compact became the basis of government in the Plymouth Colony. After it was signed, the Pilgrims elected John Carver their first governor. After weeks of scouting for a suitable settlement area, the Mayflower's passengers finally landed at Plymouth on December 26, 1620. Although the Mayflower's captain and part-owner, Christopher Jones, had threatened to leave the Pilgrims unless they quickly found a place to land.

The ship remained at Plymouth during the first terrible winter of 1620-1621, when half of the colonists died. The Mayflower left Plymouth on April 15, 1621, and arrived back in England on May 16, 1621. This is the Mayflower II, as it sits in Plymouth Harbor today. 1. The Mayflower was used for what purpose, before carrying passengers? 2. Who paid for the ship and the crew? 3. Name the 2 ships which left Plymouth twice carrying the Pilgrims. 4. Why was only one ship taken? 5. How many passengers left Plymouth, England, on September 16? 6. How many days did the Mayflower spend at sea until they landed at Plymouth? 7. How many days did it take the Mayflower to return to England? Return to page 1.

Question: The first pilgrims sailed to America from which English Port?
Answer: Plymouth