Who were the Pilgrims?
"Pilgrims" is a collective name for the first group of permanent European
settlers in New England. The name masks the real differences among the 102
people (one third of them children) who stepped ashore at Plymouth in 1620. In
their own eyes they were a group divided between Saints, those with religious
reasons for leaving home, and Strangers, those with economic motives. Despite
their differences, they created the Mayflower Compact, an agreement for living
peacefully together. They fought the cold, hunger, and illness that gripped the
colony during the first devastating winter. By the spring of 1621, half of the
original group had died, and whatever divisions there were on the voyage across
the ocean were muffled by the grief and determination to survive that they
shared.
Voyage on the Mayflower
The story of the Mayflower's journey began in the English village of Scrooby.
A congregation of Separatists, or Puritans, emigrated from there to Leiden,
Holland. After a few years they began to desire a land of their own where they
could live as Englishmen and preserve their faith. News about the thriving
English colony at Jamestown in Virginia led them to apply to the Virginia
Company for a patent. They were granted rights to found what was known as a
Particular Plantation, to be located somewhere near the mouth of the Hudson
River.
The Separatists were unable to finance an expedition themselves, but a group
of merchant capitalists, who called themselves the Company of Adventurers,
agreed to provide necessary finances in return for most of the profits earned by
the colony in the first seven years of its operation. These merchants chartered
the Mayflower for the voyage to America. The Leiden group bought a much smaller
ship, the Speedwell, and 35 of the congregation sailed on it from the
Netherlands to Southampton, England.
At Southampton they met the rest of the future colonists, who were
non-Separatists enlisted by the company to provide enough people for a working
colony. These others were referred to as Strangers. The Separatists called
themselves Saints. Numbering approximately 120, with 90 aboard the Mayflower,
the Pilgrims set sail for Southampton on August 15th. After a few days sailing,
the Speedwell was found to have leaks. The two captains turned back and turned
into Dartmouth for repairs. Almost two weeks later they set out once more.
Again, the Speedwell proved to be un-seaworthy. This time they put into Plymouth,
where it was decided to abandon the ship. Some 20 would-be colonists were
abandoned also, since the Mayflower could not hold all of them. On September
16th, the Mayflower set out alone for America.
The Mayflower
voyage was a difficult one. The ship, due to the delays caused by the Speedwell,
crossed the Atlantic later than planned-in autumn-and met with severe storms
before reaching land 66 days later. On November 11, 1620, the Mayflower came to
rest off Cape Cod.
William Bradford, the leader of the Saints,
recorded the bleak sight that met the Pilgrims after their stormy voyage:
"Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of trouble...they had now no
friends to welcome them nor inns to entertain or refresh their weather-beaten
bodies...And for the season, it was winter, and they that know the winters of
that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce
storms...
For summer being done, all things stand upon them with a weather-beaten face,
and the whole country full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage
hue. If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had
passed and was now as a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the civil
parts of the world."
Conditions on board were harsh. Many people became ill and all were confined
below deck for long periods of time during the furious storms. The ship was
blown of course by these storms so the land eventually sighted by those on board
was Cape Cod, far north and east of the Hudson River.
Mayflower Passengers
There were 102 passengers aboard the Mayflower. The majority of the
passengers were Anglicans, mostly from south-eastern England or from London
itself. These included the three who owe much of their fame to the poet,
Longfellow: Captain Myles
Standish, Priscilla Mullins, and John Alden.
Because we often use the words "Pilgrim Fathers". many people think that
those who came on the Mayflower were old men and women. This was not true. William
Brewster, oldest of all the Pilgrims, was under age fifty-five. Most of the
adults were in their twenties and thirties. About one-third of all passengers on
the Mayflower were children. About half of all who survived the first year were
under sixteen.
There were no birth certificates and so it is hard to determine exact ages.
The best that can be done is to estimate-using as clues everything written about
the Pilgrims at that time or soon after.
The Mayflower Compact
Realizing that the terms of their agreement applied to Virginia, not New
England, the leaders of the two groups, the Saints and the Strangers, drafted
the Mayflower Compact.
In this historic document, signed on board the ship within sight of land, they
stated their intention to remain unites and to make laws for the "general good"
of the new colony. The Compact established the basic form of government for the
colony.
"In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal
Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, by the Grace of God, of
England, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, e&.
Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian
Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first
colony in the northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and
mutually in the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine
ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and
Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof to
enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts,
Constitutions and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and
convenient for the General good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due
submission and obedience.
In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the
eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord, King James of England,
France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno
Domini, 1620."
Plymouth Plantation
Since Cape
Cod was unsuitable for settlement, several men set out in a smaller boat to
search for a place to build. It was mid-December before they decided on the
sheltered harbour and well-cleared land that became Plymouth. They later
discovered that this was the site of a Patuxet Indian village whose inhabitants
had died of disease. The Pilgrims soon began building their settlement on the
slope of a hill overlooking the harbour.
The Hard Winter
During that first winter, as they struggled to build shelter, illness swept
through the community. In William Bradford's words:
"...In two or three months' time half of their
company died. especially in January and February, being the depth of winter, and
wanting houses and other comforts; being infected with the scurvy and other
diseases which this long voyaage...had brought them. So as there died as many as
two or three of a day in the foresaid time, that of a 100 and odd persons,
scarce 50 remained.
Of the 50 people who survived the first terrible winter, over half were
children and there were only four women.
The First Thanksgiving
What people call the first
Thanksgiving, that is, the Pilgrims' celebration of their harvest in 1621,
wasn't a Thanksgiving to them. To the Pilgrims, a Thanksgiving was a formal
religious service. Nowhere inn their writings about the first year in Plymouth
do they mention such a service. They do mention a three-day feast, however, and
historians believe it was a Harvest Home celebration, such as those held in
England to celebrate the gathering of the crops.
What We Know About the First Harvest Home
There were about 140 people (90 Indian men and about 50 Pilgrims) at the
three-day celebration. Four adult women (the only women left after the terrible
first winter) probably were in charge of all the cooking.
The date was sometime between September 21 and November 9, 1621.
On the menu were sea bass, cod, wildfowl-duck, geese, or wild turkey;
cornmeal; and five deer brought by the Indians. Vegetables and fruit were
probably part of the meal also.
Games, singing, and dancing were most likely part of the celebration.
The First Thanksgiving Proclamation
June 20, 1676
On June 20, 1676, the governing council of Charlestown, Massachusetts, held a
meeting to determine how best to express thanks for the good fortune that had
seen their community securely established. By unanimous vote they instructed
Edward Rawson, the clerk, to proclaim June 29 as a day of thanksgiving, our
first. That proclamation is reproduced here in the same language and spelling as
the original.
"The Holy God having by a long and Continual
Series of his Afflictive dispensations in and by the present Warr with the
Heathen Natives of this land, written and brought to pass bitter things against
his own Covenant people in this wilderness, yet so that we evidently discern
that in the midst of his judgements he hath remembered mercy, having remembered
his Footstool in the day of his sore displeasure against us for our sins, with
many singular Intimations of his Fatherly Compassion, and regard; reserving many
of our Towns from Desolation Threatened, and attempted by the Enemy, and giving
us especially of late with many of our Confederates many signal Advantages
against them, without such Disadvantage to ourselves as formerly we have been
sensible of, if it be the Lord's mercy that we are not consumed, It certainly
bespeaks our positive Thankfulness, when our Enemies are in any measure
disappointed or destroyed; and fearing the Lord should take notice under so many
Intimations of his returning mercy, we should be found an Insensible people, as
not standing before Him with Thanksgiving, as well as lading him with our
Complaints in the time of pressing Afflictions:
The Council has thought meet to appoint and set apart the 29th day of this
instant June, as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God for such his
Goodness and Favour, many Particulars of which mercy might be Instanced, but we
doubt not those who are sensible of God's Afflictions, have been as diligent to
espy him returning to us; and that the Lord may behold us as a People offering
Praise and thereby glorifying Him; the Council doth commend it to the Respective
Ministers, Elders and people of this Jurisdiction; Solemnly and seriously to
keep the same Beseeching that being perswaded by the mercies of God we may all,
even this whole people offer up our bodies and soulds as a living and acceptable
Service unto God by Jesus Christ."
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