In 1608, about a year after the founding of Jamestown, an 18-year-old farmer’s son named William Bradford sneaked out of England with a small group of Separatists and settled in the small Dutch city of Leiden. As the years passed, Bradford became a silk and cotton weaver, married, and had a son. In his free time, he devoured books, teaching himself to read in six languages. Moreover, the Dutch authorities didn’t care what religious beliefs he held.
Still, something didn’t feel right. A decade into their stay, the Separatists were troubled that their children were losing, or had already lost, any sense of their English heritage. It was time to move on, they decided, and the place to move was America.
The move took three years of planning and negotiations with the English powers-that-be. Sir George Sandys, the Virginia Company cofounder who had done much to stabilize Jamestown, was not particularly sympathetic to their plight, but his company needed colonists. Sandys helped them secure a charter entitling them to 80,000 acres near what is now New York City.It took one false start and the abandonment of a leaking sister vessel, but on Sept. 16, 1620, a group of 102 men, women, and children who had briefly returned to England from Holland left the English port of Southampton. They were aboard “a staunch, chunky slow-sailing vessel” called the Mayflower. It was about 90 feet long and 25 feet wide amidships. And while it leaked and carried at least 30 more people than it should have, its passengers noted that it didn’t stink, at least not at first. For most of its life, the Mayflower had carried wine between France and England, rather than animals, cheese, or something equally odoriferous.
Now it carried Bradford, his wife (they had left their son behind with relatives, deeming the passage too dangerous), and 35 other Separatists, to whom Bradford would refer to as Pilgrims years later when he wrote his memoirs. There were also 65 non-Separatist settlers, some of whom had been chosen because they had skills that would be useful in the colony, such as carpentry or blacksmithing.Along with its passengers, the ship’s cargo included musical instruments, enough furniture for 19 cottages, a book on the history of Turkey, and provisions from spices and turnips to oatmeal and dried ox tongues. A shoemaker named William Mullins brought 139 pairs of boots and shoes.
Despite a rough crossing that took 65 days, only one passenger and one crew member died on the voyage, and one baby was born. Tragically, however, Bradford’s wife fell overboard and drowned shortly after the ship dropped anchor in a broad shallow bay they called Plymouth, near the site of abandoned Indian cornfield.
“A Civil Body Politick”
Two important things happened on the way over to America. One was that as a result of fierce storms, the Mayflower was blown at least a hundred miles north of its intended landing site. That meant they were essentially squatters and lacked any legal right to establish a colony where they were.The second was a brief document signed on Nov. 21, 1620, by 41 male passengers, in which they agreed to “covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation.” It also pledged them to draft “equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Officials . . . as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the General Good of the Colony.”
©Library of CongressPilgrims signing the Mayflower Compact, Nov. 11, 1620.
The Mayflower Compact, as it came to be known, was occasioned by the mutterings of some of the non-Pilgrims, (whom Pilgrims called Strangers) who claimed that since they weren’t settling on the land described in the charter, they weren’t bound by the charter’s rules. To prevent chaos, the Pilgrims drew up the compact. The document also gave them some political cover because it made clear they weren’t rebels and still considered themselves loyal subjects of King James.The compact lacked any details about the colony’s governmental structure or specific laws. Even so, it was a remarkable document, in that it was not a pact between a ruler and the ruled, but among peers all voluntarily promising to respect the rights and equal standing of each other.
The Plymouth colonists leave their mark
Despite their planning, the Plymouth colony had a very rough start, in part because they arrived at the beginning of a New England winter. Like the Jamestown colonists, half of the Plymouth settlers died in the first six months — including the shoemaker Mullins, his wife, and his son. But unlike most of Jamestown’s citizens, the Pilgrims were hard workers.They were also flexible. The original idea had been to function as something of a commune, with crops and other stores to be collectively gathered and distributed. But when the system produced less-than-desirable results the first year, colony leaders divided the land into individual parcels and let families fend for themselves. The colony did much better the second year.
The Plymothians benefited from having an intelligent and able leader. William Bradford, the weaver-turned-immigrant, was elected governor after the original governor died in 1621. He served in the office for most of the rest of his life, which ended in 1657. They also had a reliable, though diminutive, military leader in Myles Standish (his nickname was Captain Shrimpe).
Finally, they were extremely lucky because the local Native Americans, the Wampanoag, proved not only to be hospitable neighbors, but had one among them who spoke English. His name was Squanto. He had been kidnapped twice by Europeans and enslaved, escaped, and returned to America only to find his entire tribe had been wiped out by a disease probably introduced by Europeans. But Squanto was apparently not one to hold a grudge. Until his death about a year after the Pilgrims arrived, Squanto served as an invaluable interpreter and adviser.
With Squanto as a go-between, the Wampanoag showed the newcomers some planting techniques. They traded the Pilgrims furs for some of the newcomers’ surplus corn, thus giving the colonists something to send back to their financial backers in England. By the summer of 1621, the Plymouth settlers had enough to be thankful for that they could afford to host a few days of feasting with the locals. (Just 242 years later, President Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a national holiday.)
The Plymouth colony never hit a Jamestown-like tobacco jackpot and by 1692 had been absorbed into the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony. But the impact of its approach to government far outstripped its size or longevity as a colony. Plymouth became a symbol of self-governance, and the Pilgrims, in the words of eminent historian Samuel Eliot Morrison, became “the spiritual ancestors of all Americans.”