Founded by a group of separatists who later came to be known as the Pilgrims, Plymouth Colony was, along with Jamestown, Virginia, one of the earliest colonies to be founded by the English in North America and the first sizable permanent English settlement in the New England region. Aided by Squanto, a Native American, the colony was able to establish a treaty with Chief Massasoit which helped to ensure the colony's success. The colony played a central role in King Philip's War, one of the earliest and bloodiest of the Indian Wars. Ultimately, the colony was annexed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691.
Plymouth holds a special role in American history. Rather than being entrepreneurs like many of the settlers of Jamestown, the citizens of Plymouth were fleeing religious persecution and searching for a place to worship God as they saw fit. The social and legal systems of the colony were thus closely tied to their religious beliefs. Many of the people and events surrounding Plymouth Colony have become part of American mythology, including the North American tradition known as Thanksgiving and the monument known as Plymouth Rock. Despite the colony's relatively short history, it has become an important symbol of what is now labeled "American".
In Leiden, the congregation found the freedom to worship as it chose, but Dutch society was unfamiliar to these immigrants. Scrooby had been an agricultural community, whereas Leiden was a thriving industrial center, and the pace of life was hard on the Pilgrims. Furthermore, though the community remained close-knit, their children began adopting the Dutch customs and language. The Pilgrims were also still not free from the persecutions of the English Crown; after William Brewster in 1618 published comments highly critical of the King of England and the Anglican Church, English authorities came to Leiden to arrest him. Though Brewster escaped arrest, the events spurred the congregation to move even further from England.
In June 1619, after declining the opportunity to settle in New Netherland due to their desire to avoid the Dutch influence, the Pilgrims obtained a land patent from the London Virginia Company, allowing them to settle at the mouth of the Hudson River. They then sought financing through the Merchant Adventurers, a group of Puritan businessmen who viewed colonization as a means of both spreading their religion and making a profit. Upon arriving in America, the Pilgrims began working to repay their debts.
Using the financing secured from the Merchant Adventurers, the Pilgrims bought provisions and obtained passage on two ships, the Mayflower and the Speedwell. Though they had intended to leave early in 1620, difficulties in dealing with the Merchant Adventurers, including several changes in plans for the voyage and in financing, resulted in a delay of several months. The Pilgrims finally boarded the Speedwell in July 1620 from the Dutch port of Delfshaven.
The Mayflower arrived in Southampton, England, to rendezvous with the Speedwell and to pick up supplies and additional passengers. Among the passengers to join the group in Southampton were several Pilgrims including William Brewster, who had been in hiding for the better part of a year, and a group of passengers known to the Pilgrims as "The Strangers". This group was largely made up of passengers recruited by the Merchant Adventurers to provide governance for the colony as well as additional hands to work for the colony's ventures. Among the Strangers were Myles Standish, who would be the colony's military leader, Christopher Martin, who had been designated by the Merchant Adventurers to act as Governor for the duration of the trans-Atlantic trip, and Stephen Hopkins, a veteran of a failed colonial venture that may have been the inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest.
The departure of the Mayflower and Speedwell for America was beset by delays. Further disagreements with the Merchant Adventurers held the departure up in Southampton. A total of 120 passengers, 90 on the Mayflower and 30 on the Speedwell, finally departed on August 15. Leaving Southampton, the Speedwell experienced significant leakage, which required the ships to immediately put in at Dartmouth. After repairs were completed and a further delay ensued awaiting favorable winds, the two ships made it only two hundred miles beyond Land's End before another major leak in the Speedwell forced the expedition to return again to England, this time to the port of Plymouth. The Speedwell was determined to be unseaworthy; some passengers abandoned their attempt to emigrate, while others joined the Mayflower, crowding the already heavily burdened ship. Later, it was speculated that the master of the Speedwell had intentionally sabotaged his ship to avoid having to make the treacherous trans-Atlantic voyage.
The Mayflower, carrying 102 settlers, left Plymouth on September 6, 1620, without her sister ship the Speedwell, and sailed for the New World with a land patent allowing them to settle specifically at the mouth of the Hudson River. The voyage took almost two months as it was drawn out by strong westerly winds and by the Gulf Stream. Land was sighted on November 9 off the coast of Cape Cod. The Mayflower made an attempt to sail south to the designated landing site at the mouth of the Hudson but ran into trouble in the region of Pollack Rip, a shallow area of shoals between Cape Cod and Nantucket Island. With winter approaching and provisions running dangerously low, the passengers decided to return north and abandon their original landing plans.
The location in Cape Cod Bay settled by the Plymouth Colony was outside the territory of the London Company, which had granted its patent. The northern coastal territory had been granted to the Plymouth Company, but this patent fell into disuse after the failure of the Popham Colony. It was reorganized under a sea-to-sea charter under the Plymouth Council for New England. The actual Plymouth Colony would obtain land patents from the Plymouth Council in 1621 and in 1630, but it was governed independently from the Council under the Mayflower Compact.
The Pilgrims were not the first people in the area. Besides the Native American tribes native to the area, there had been nearly a century of exploration, fishing, and settlement by Europeans. John Cabot's discovery of Newfoundland in 1497 had laid the foundation for the extensive English claims over the east coast of North America. One of the earliest maps of New England, produced c. 1540 by cartographer Giacomo Gastaldi, erroneously identified Cape Breton with the Narragansett Bay; the resulting map completely omits most of the New England coast. European fishermen had been plying the waters off the New England coast for much of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Frenchman Samuel de Champlain had explored the area extensively in 1605. He had specifically explored Plymouth Harbor, which he called "Port St. Louis", and made an extensive and detailed map of it and the surrounding lands. Patuxet, the native village upon which the town of Plymouth would soon be built, was shown by Champlain as a thriving settlement. However, in the 15 years before the arrival of the Mayflower, smallpox and other diseases brought by English fishermen to the area had completely wiped out the population.
Popham Colony, also known as Fort St. George, was organized by the Plymouth Company (unrelated to Plymouth Colony) and founded in 1607. It was settled on the coast of Maine and was beset by internal political struggles as well as sickness and weather problems. It was abandoned in 1608.
Captain John Smith of Jamestown fame had explored the area in 1614 and is credited with naming the region of New England. He named many locations using approximations of Native American words. The future site of the Pilgrim's first settlement was originally named "Accomack" by Smith. In consultation with Prince Charles, son of King James, Smith changed "Accomack" to New Plymouth. A map published in his 1616 work A Description of New England clearly shows the site of the future Pilgrim settlement as named "New Plimouth".
In the Mayflower settlers' first explorations of Cape Cod, they came across evidence that Europeans had previously spent extensive time there. They discovered remains of a European fort and uncovered a grave that contained the remains of both an adult European male and a Native American child.
The group remained onboard the ship through the next day, a Sunday, for prayer and worship. The immigrants finally set foot on land at what would become Provincetown on November 13. The first task was to rebuild a shallop, a shallow draft boat that had been built in England and disassembled for transport aboard the Mayflower. It would remain with the Pilgrims while the Mayflower returned to England. On November 15, Captain Myles Standish led a party of sixteen men on an exploratory mission, during which they robbed Native American graves and located a buried cache of Indian corn. The shallop was finished on November 27, and using it, a second expedition was undertaken, under the direction of Mayflower master Christopher Jones. Thirty-four men went, but the expedition was beset by bad weather; the only positive result, from their perspective, was that they found the previously discovered cache of corn and raided it to provide for the colony. A third expedition along Cape Cod left on December 6; it resulted in a skirmish with local Native Americans known as the "First Encounter" near modern-day Eastham, Massachusetts. Having failed to secure a proper site for their settlement, and fearing that they had angered the local Native Americans by robbing their corn stores and firing upon them, the Mayflower left Provincetown Harbor and set sail for Plymouth Harbor.
The colonists dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor on December 17 and spent three days surveying for a settlement site. They rejected several sites, including one on Clark's Island and another at the mouth of the Jones River, in favor of the site of a recently abandoned Native American settlement named Patuxet. The location was chosen largely for its defensive position; the settlement would be centered on two hills: Cole's Hill, where the village would be built, and Fort Hill, where a defensive cannon would be stationed. Also important in choosing the site, the prior Indian villagers had cleared much of the land, making agriculture relatively easy. Although there are no contemporary accounts to verify the legend, Plymouth Rock is often hailed as the point where the colonists first set foot on their new homeland.
By the end of January, enough of the settlement had been built to begin unloading provisions from the Mayflower. In mid-February, after several tense encounters with local Native Americans, the male residents of the settlement organized themselves into military orders; Myles Standish was designated as the commanding officer. By the end of the month, five cannons had been defensively positioned on Fort Hill. John Carver was elected governor to replace Governor Martin.
On March 16, 1621, the first formal contact with the Native Americans occurred. A Native American named Samoset, originally from Pemaquid Point in modern Maine, walked boldly into the midst of the settlement and proclaimed, "Welcome, Englishmen!" He had learned some English from fishermen who worked off the coast of Maine and gave them a brief introduction to the region's history and geography. It was during this meeting that the Pilgrims found out that the previous residents of the Native American village, Patuxet, had probably died of smallpox. They also discovered that the supreme leader of the region was a Wampanoag Native American sachem (chief) by the name of Massasoit; and they learned of the existence of Squanto—also known by his full Massachusett name of Tisquantum—a Native American originally from Patuxet. Squanto had spent time in Europe and spoke English quite well. Samoset spent the night in Plymouth and agreed to arrange a meeting with some of Massasoit's men.
Massasoit and Squanto were apprehensive about the Pilgrims. In Massasoit's first contact with the English, several men of his tribe had been killed in an unprovoked attack by English sailors. He also knew of the Pilgrims' theft of the corn stores and grave robbing. Squanto had been abducted in 1614 by the English explorer Thomas Hunt and had spent five years in Europe, first as a slave for a group of Spanish monks, then in England. He had returned to New England in 1619, acting as a guide to the explorer Ferdinando Gorges. Massasoit and his men had massacred the crew of the ship and had taken in Squanto.
Samoset returned to Plymouth on March 22 with a delegation from Massasoit that included Squanto; Massasoit joined them shortly thereafter. After an exchange of gifts, Massasoit and Governor Martin established a formal treaty of peace. This treaty ensured that each people would not bring harm to the other, that Massasoit would send his allies to make peaceful negotiations with Plymouth, and that they would come to each other's aid in a time of war.
On April 5, 1621, after being anchored for almost four months in Plymouth Harbor, the Mayflower set sail for England. Nearly half of the original 102 passengers died during the first winter. As William Bradford wrote, "of these one hundred persons who came over in this first ship together, the greatest half died in the general mortality, and most of them in two or three months' time". Several of the graves on Cole's Hill were uncovered in 1855; their bodies were disinterred and moved to a site near Plymouth Rock.
The autumn celebration in late 1621 that has become known as "The First Thanksgiving" was not known as such to the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims did recognize a celebration known as a "Thanksgiving", which was a solemn ceremony of praise and thanks to God for a congregation's good fortune. The first such Thanksgiving as the Pilgrims would have called it did not occur until 1623, in response to the good news of the arrival of additional colonists and supplies. That event probably occurred in July and consisted of a full day of prayer and worship and probably very little revelry.
The event now commemorated by the United States at the end of November each year is more properly termed a "harvest festival". The festival was probably held in early October 1621 and was celebrated by the 51 surviving Pilgrims, along with Massasoit and 90 of his men. Two contemporary accounts of the event survive: Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford as well as Mourt's Relation by Edward Winslow. The celebration lasted three days and featured a feast that included numerous types of waterfowl, wild turkeys and fish procured by the colonists, as well as five deer brought by the Native Americans.
After the departure of Massasoit and his men, Squanto remained in Plymouth to teach the Pilgrims how to survive in New England, for example using dead fish to fertilize the soil. Shortly after the departure of the Mayflower, Governor Carver suddenly died. William Bradford was elected to replace him and went on to lead the colony through much of its formative years.
As promised by Massasoit, numerous Native Americans arrived at Plymouth throughout the middle of 1621 with pledges of peace. On July 2, a party of Pilgrims, led by Edward Winslow (who later became the chief diplomat of the colony), set out to continue negotiations with the chief. The delegation also included Squanto, who acted as a translator. After traveling for several days, they arrived at Massasoit's capital, the village of Sowams near Narragansett Bay. After meals and an exchange of gifts, Massasoit agreed to an exclusive trading pact with the English—and thus the French, who were also frequent traders in the area—were no longer welcome. Squanto remained behind and traveled the area to establish trading relations with several tribes in the area.
In late July, a boy by the name of John Billington became lost for some time in the woods around the colony. It was reported he was found by the Nauset, the same group of Native Americans on Cape Cod from whom the Pilgrims had stolen corn seed the prior year upon their first explorations. The English organized a party to return Billington to Plymouth. The Pilgrims agreed to reimburse the Nauset for the stolen goods in return for the Billington boy. This negotiation did much to secure further peace with the Native Americans in the area.
During their dealings with the Nausets over the release of John Billington, the Pilgrims learned of troubles that Massasoit was experiencing. Massasoit, Squanto, and several other Wampanoags had been captured by Corbitant, sachem of the Narragansett tribe. A party of ten men, under the leadership of Myles Standish, set out to find and execute Corbitant. While hunting for Corbitant, they learned that Squanto had escaped and Massasoit was back in power. Several Native Americans had been injured by Standish and his men and were offered medical attention in Plymouth. Though they had failed to capture Corbitant, the show of force by Standish had garnered respect for the Pilgrims, and as a result nine of the most powerful sachems in the area, including Massasoit and Corbitant, signed a treaty in September that pledged their loyalty to King James.
In May 1622, a vessel named the Sparrow arrived carrying seven men from the Merchant Adventurers whose purpose was to seek out a site for a new settlement in the area. Two ships followed shortly thereafter carrying sixty settlers, all men. They spent July and August in Plymouth before moving north to settle in modern Weymouth, Massachusetts at a settlement they named Wessagussett. Though short-lived, the settlement of Wessagussett provided the spark for an event that would dramatically change the political landscape between the local Native American tribes and the English settlers. Responding to reports of a military threat to Wessagussett, Myles Standish organized a militia to defend Wessagussett. However, he found that there had been no attack. He therefore decided on a pre-emptive strike. In an event called "Standish's raid" by historian Nathaniel Philbrick, he lured two prominent Massachusett military leaders into a house at Wessagussett under the pretense of sharing a meal and making negotiations. Standish and his men then stabbed and killed the two unsuspecting Native Americans. The local sachem, named Obtakiest, was pursued by Standish and his men but escaped with three English prisoners from Wessagussett, who he then executed. Within a short time, Wessagussett was disbanded, and the survivors were integrated into the town of Plymouth.
Word quickly spread among the Native American tribes of Standish's attack; many Native Americans abandoned their villages and fled the area. As noted by Philbrick: "Standish's raid had irreparably damaged the human ecology of the region...It was some time before a new equilibrium came to the region." Edward Winslow, in his 1624 memoirs Good News from New England, reports that "they forsook their houses, running to and fro like men distracted, living in swamps and other desert places, and so brought manifold diseases amongst themselves, whereof very many are dead". Lacking the trade in furs provided by the local tribes, the Pilgrims lost their main source of income for paying off their debts to the Merchant Adventurers. Rather than strengthening their position, Standish's raid had disastrous consequences for the colony, as attested William Bradford, who in a letter to the Merchant Adventurers noted "[W]e had much damaged our trade, for there where we had [the] most skins the Indians are run away from their habitations..." The only positive effect of Standish's raid seemed to be the increased power of the Massasoit-led Wampanoag, the Pilgrims' closest ally in the region.
In July 1623, two more ships arrived, carrying 90 new settlers, among them Leideners, including William Bradford's future wife, Alice. Some of the settlers were unprepared for frontier life and returned to England the next year. In September 1623, another ship carrying settlers destined to refound the failed colony at Weymouth arrived and temporarily stayed at Plymouth. In March 1624, a ship bearing a few additional settlers and the first cattle arrived. A 1627 division of cattle lists 156 colonists divided into twelve lots of thirteen colonists each. Another ship also named the Mayflower arrived in August 1629 with 35 additional members of the Leiden congregation. Ships arrived throughout the period between 1629 and 1630 carrying new settlers; though the exact number is unknown, contemporary documents claimed that by January 1630 the colony had almost 300 people. In 1643 the colony had an estimated 600 males fit for military service, implying a total population of about 2,000. By 1690, on the eve of the dissolution of the colony, the estimated total population of Plymouth County, the most populous, was 3,055 people. It is estimated that the entire population of the colony at the point of its dissolution was around 7,000. For comparison it is estimated that between 1630 and 1640, a period known as the Great Migration, over 20,000 settlers had arrived in Massachusetts Bay Colony alone, and by 1678 the English population of all of New England was estimated to be in the range of 60,000. Despite the fact that Plymouth was the first colony in the region, by the time of its annexation it was much smaller than Massachusetts Bay Colony.
When it appeared the war would resume, four of the New England colonies (Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Haven, and Plymouth) formed a defensive compact known as the United Colonies of New England. Edward Winslow, already known for his diplomatic skills, was the chief architect of the United Colonies. His experience in the United Provinces of the Netherlands during the Leiden years was key to organizing the confederation. John Adams later considered the United Colonies to be the prototype for the Articles of Confederation, which was the first attempt at a national government.
Also known as Metacomet and other variations on that name, King Philip was the younger son of Massasoit, and the heir of Massasoit's position as sachem of the Pokanoket and supreme leader of the Wampanoag. He became sachem upon the sudden death of his older brother Wamsutta, also known as Alexander, in 1662.
The cause of the war stems from the increasing numbers of English colonists and their demand for land. As more land was purchased from the Native Americans, they were restricted to smaller territories for themselves. Native American leaders such as King Philip resented the loss of land and looked for a means to slow or reverse it. Of specific concern was the founding of the town of Swansea, which was located only a few miles from the Wampanoag capital at Mount Hope. The General Court of Plymouth began using military force to coerce the sale of Wampanoag land to the settlers of the town.
The proximate cause of the conflict was the death of a Praying Indian named John Sassamon in 1675. Sassamon had been an advisor and friend to King Philip; however Sassamon's conversion to Christianity had driven the two apart. Accused in the murder of Sassamon were some of Philip's most senior lieutenants. A jury of twelve Englishmen and six Praying Indians found the Native Americans guilty of murder and sentenced them to death. To this day, some debate exists whether King Philip's men actually committed the murder.
Philip had already begun war preparations at his home base near Mount Hope where he started raiding English farms and pillaging their property. In response, Governor Josiah Winslow called out the militia, and they organized and began to move on Philip's position. King Philip's men attacked unarmed women and children in order to receive a ransom. One such attack resulted in the capture of Mary Rowlandson. The memoirs of her capture provided historians with much information on Native American culture during this time period.
The war continued through the rest of 1675 and into the next year. The English were constantly frustrated by the Native American's refusal to meet them in pitched battle. They employed a form of guerilla warfare that confounded the English. Captain Benjamin Church continuously campaigned to enlist the help of friendly Native Americans to help learn how to fight on an even footing with Philip's troops, but he was constantly rebuffed by the Plymouth leadership who mistrusted all Native Americans, thinking them potential enemies. Eventually, Governor Winslow and Plymouth military commander Major William Bradford (son of the late Governor William Bradford) relented and gave Church permission to organize a combined force of English and Native Americans. After securing the alliance of the Sakonnet, he led his combined force in pursuit of Philip, who had thus far avoided any major battles in the war that bears his name. Throughout July 1676, Church's band would capture hundreds of Native American troops, often without much of a fight, though Philip eluded him. After Church was given permission to grant amnesty to any captured Native Americans who would agree to join the English side, his force grew immensely. Philip was killed by a Pocasset Indian; the war soon ended as an overwhelming English victory.
Eight percent of the English adult male population is estimated to have died during the war, a rather large percentage by most standards. The impact on the Native Americans was far higher, however. So many were killed, fled, or shipped off as slaves that the entire Native American population of New England fell by sixty to eighty percent.
In 1686, the entire region was reorganized under a single government known as the Dominion of New England; this included the colonies of Plymouth, Rhode Island, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. New York, West Jersey, and East Jersey were added in 1688. The President of the Dominion, Edmund Andros, was highly unpopular, and the union did not last. Plymouth Colony revolted and withdrew from the Dominion in April 1688; the entire union was dissolved during the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
The return of self-rule for Plymouth Colony was short-lived, however. A delegation of New Englanders, led by Increase Mather, went to England to negotiate for a return of the colonial charters that had been nullified during the Dominion years. The situation was particularly problematic for Plymouth Colony, as it had existed without a formal charter since its founding. Plymouth did not get their wish for a formal charter; instead a new charter was issued, annexing Plymouth Colony to Massachusetts Bay Colony. The official date of the proclamation ending the existence of Plymouth Colony was October 17, 1691, though it was not put into force until the arrival of the new charter on May 14, 1692, carried by William Phips. The last official meeting of the Plymouth General Court occurred on June 8, 1692.
The Pilgrims themselves were a subset of an English religious movement known as Puritanism, which sought to "purify" the Anglican Church of its secular trappings. The movement sought to return the church to a more primitive state and to practice Christianity as was done by the earliest Church Fathers. Puritans believed that the Bible was the only true source of religious teaching and that any additions made to Christianity, especially with regard to church traditions, had no place in Christian practice. The Pilgrims distinguished themselves from the Puritans in that they sought to "separate" themselves from the Anglican Church, rather than reform it from within. It was this desire to worship from outside of the Anglican Communion that led them first to the Netherlands and ultimately to New England.
Each town in Plymouth colony was considered a single church congregation; in later years some of the larger towns split into two or three congregations. While church attendance was mandatory for all residents of the colony, church membership was restricted to those who received God's grace through personal conversion. In Plymouth Colony, it seems that a simple profession of faith was all that was required for acceptance. This was a more liberal doctrine than some other Puritan congregations, such as those of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where it was common to subject those seeking formal membership to strict and detailed cross-examinations. There was no central governing body for the churches. Each individual congregation was left to determine its own standards of membership, hire its own ministers, and conduct its own business.
The church was undoubtedly the most important social institution in the colony. Not only was the Bible the primary religious document of the society, but it also served as the primary legal document as well. Church attendance was not only mandatory, but membership was socially vital. Education was carried out for almost purely religious purposes. The laws of the colony specifically asked parents to provide for the education of their children, to "at least to be able duly to read the Scriptures" and to understand "the main Grounds and Principles of Christian Religion." It was expected that the male head of the household be responsible for the religious well-being of all its members, children and servants alike.
Most churches utilized two acts to sanction its members: censure and excommunication. Censure was a formal reprimand for behavior that did not conform with accepted religious and social norms, while excommunication involved full removal from church membership. Many perceived social evils, from fornication to public drunkenness, were dealt with through church discipline rather than through civil punishment. Church sanctions seldom held official recognition outside church membership and seldom resulted in civil or criminal proceedings. Nevertheless, such sanctions were a powerful tool of social control.
The Pilgrims practiced infant baptism. The public baptism ceremony was usually performed within six months of birth. Marriage was considered a civil, rather than religious ceremony. Such an arrangement may have been a habit that had developed during the Leiden years, as civil marriage was common in the Netherlands. However, the Pilgrims saw this arrangement as Biblical, there being no evidence from Scripture that a minister should preside over a wedding.
Besides the Puritan theology espoused by their religious leaders, the people of Plymouth Colony had a strong belief in the supernatural. Richard Greenham, a Puritan theologian whose works were known to the Plymouth residents, counseled extensively against turning to magic or wizardry to solve problems. The Pilgrims saw Satan's work in nearly every calamity that befell them; the dark magical arts were very real and present for them. They believed in the presence of malevolent spirits who brought misfortune to people. For example, in 1660, a court inquest into the drowning death of Jeremiah Burroughs determined that a possessed canoe was to blame. While Massachusetts Bay Colony experienced an outbreak of witchcraft scares in the 17th century, there is little evidence that Plymouth was engulfed in anything similar. While witchcraft was listed as a capital crime in the 1636 codification of the laws by the Plymouth General Court, there were no actual convictions of witches in Plymouth Colony. The court records only show two formal accusations of witchcraft. The first, of Goodwife Holmes in 1661, never went to trial. The second, of Mary Ingram in 1677, resulted in trial and acquittal.
Edward Winslow and Susanna White, each of who lost their spouses during the harsh winter of 1620–1621, became the first couple to be married in Plymouth. Governor Bradford presided over the civil ceremony.
Marriage was considered the normal state for all adult residents of the colony. Most men first married in their mid-twenties and women around age 20. Second marriages were not uncommon, and widows and widowers faced social and economic pressures to remarry. On average, most widows and widowers remarried within six months to a year. As most adults who reached marriageable age often lived into their sixties, two-thirds of a person's life was spent married.
Within the confines of marriage, women and men were not considered equal from either a legal or social standpoint. However, it should be noted that, compared to 17th century European norms, women in Plymouth Colony had more extensive legal and social rights. From the perspective of the Church, women were considered equal to men before God. The entire family worshiped together and God's grace was available equally to all professed Christians. Women were, however, expected to take traditionally feminine roles, such as child-rearing and maintaining the household, in Puritan families.
Unlike in Europe, where women had few rights, Plymouth women enjoyed extensive property and legal rights. Widows in Plymouth could not be legally "written out" of her husband's will and were guaranteed a full third of the family's property upon his death. Women were parties to contracts in Plymouth; most notably prenuptial agreements. It was common for brides-to-be (and not, notably, their fathers) to enter into contractual agreements on the consolidation of property upon marriage. In some cases, especially in second marriages, women were given exclusive right to retain control of their property separately from their husbands. Women were also known to occasionally sit on juries in Plymouth, a remarkable circumstance in seventeenth century legal practice. Historians James and Patricia Scott Deetz cite a 1678 inquest into the death of Anne Batson's child, where the jury was composed of five women and seven men.
Family size in the colony was large by modern American standards, though childbirth was often spaced out, with an average of two years between children. Most families averaged five to six children living under the same roof, though it would not be uncommon for one family to have grown children moving out before the mother had finished giving birth. Mortality rates were high for both mother and child; one birth in thirty resulted in the death of the mother, resulting in one in five women dying in childbirth. Infant mortality rates were high, with 12% of children dying before their first birthday. By comparison, the infant mortality rate for the United States in 1995 was 0.76%.
The nuclear family was the most common familial structure in the colony, and while close relatives may have lived nearby, it was expected that upon reaching the age of maturity, older children would move out and establish their own households. In addition to parents and birth children living in the same household, many families took in children from other families or hired indentured servants. Some of the more wealthy families owned slaves.
Children generally remained in the direct care of their mothers until the age of about eight years old, after which time it was not uncommon for the child to be placed in the foster care of another family. There were any number of reasons for a child to be "put-out" in this manner. Some children were placed into households to learn a trade, others to be taught to read and write. It seems that there was, as with almost every decision in the colony, a theological reason for fostering children. It was assumed that a child's own parents would love them too much and would not properly discipline them. By placing a child in the care of another family, there was little danger of a child being spoiled.
Adolescence was not a recognized phase of life in Plymouth colony, and there was not a single rite of passage that marked transition from youth to adulthood. Several important transitions occurred at various ages, but none marked a single "coming of age" event. As early as eight years old, children were expected to begin learning their adult roles in life, by taking on some of the family work or by being placed in foster homes to learn a trade. Most children experienced religious conversion around the age of eight as well, thus becoming church members. Orphaned children were given the right to choose their own guardians at age 14. At 16, males became eligible for military duty and were also considered adults for legal purposes, such as standing trial for crimes. Age 21 was the youngest at which a male could become a freeman, though for practical purposes this occurred sometime in a man's mid-twenties. Though 21 was the assumed age of inheritance as well, the law respected the rights of the deceased to name an earlier age in his will.
Actual schools were rare in Plymouth colony. The first true school was not founded until 40 years after the foundation of the colony. The General Court first authorized colony-wide funding for formal public schooling in 1673, but only one town, Plymouth, made use of these funds at that time. By 1683, though, five additional towns had received this funding.
Education of the young was never considered to be the primary domain of schools, even after they had become more common. Most education was carried out by a child's parents or foster parents. While formal apprenticeships were not the norm in Plymouth, it was expected that a foster family would teach the children whatever trades they themselves practiced. The church also played a central role in a child's education. As noted above, the primary purpose of teaching a child to read was so that they could read the Bible for themselves.
Plymouth Colony did not have a royal charter authorizing it to form a government. Still, some means of governance was needed; the Mayflower Compact, signed by the 41 able-bodied men aboard the Mayflower upon their arrival in Provincetown Harbor on November 21, 1620, was the colony's first governing document. Formal laws were not codified until 1636. The colony's laws were based on a hybrid of English common law and religious law as laid out in the Bible.
The colony offered nearly all adult males potential citizenship in the colony. Full citizens, or "freemen," were accorded full rights and privileges in areas such as voting and holding office. To be considered a freeman, adult males had to be sponsored by an existing freeman and accepted by the General Court. Later restrictions established a one-year waiting period between nominating and granting of freeman status and also placed religious restrictions on the colony's citizens, specifically preventing Quakers from becoming freemen. Freeman status was also restricted by age; while the official minimum age was 21, in practice most men were elevated to freeman status between the ages of 25 and 40, averaging somewhere in their early thirties.
|Governors of Plymouth Colony|
The General Court was both the chief legislative and judicial body of the colony. It was elected by the freemen from among their own number and met regularly in Plymouth, the capital town of the colony. As part of its judicial duties, it would periodically call a "Grand Enquest", which was a grand jury of sorts, elected from the freemen, who would hear complaints and swear out indictments for credible accusations. The General Court, and later lesser town and county courts, would preside over trials of accused criminals and over civil matters, but the ultimate decisions were made by a jury of freemen.
As a legislative body, the General Court could make proclamations of law as needed. In the early years of the colony, these laws were not formally compiled anywhere. In 1636 these laws were first organized and published in the 1636 Book of Laws. The book was reissued in 1658, 1672, and 1685. Among these laws included the levying of "rates", or taxes, and the distribution of colony lands. The General Court established townships as a means of providing local government over settlements, but reserved for itself the right to control specific distribution of land to individuals within those towns. When new land was granted to a freeman, it was directed that only the person to whom the land was granted was allowed to settle it. It was forbidden for individual settlers to purchase land from Native Americans without formal permission from the General Court. The government recognized the precarious peace that existed with the Wampanoag, and wished to avoid antagonizing them by buying up all of their land.
The laws also set out crimes and their associated punishments. There were several crimes that mandated the death penalty: treason, murder, witchcraft, arson, sodomy, rape, bestiality, adultery, and cursing or smiting one's parents. The actual exercise of the death penalty was fairly rare; only one sex-related crime, a 1642 incidence of bestiality by Thomas Granger, resulted in execution. One person, Edward Bumpus, was sentenced to death for "striking and abusing his parents" in 1679, but his sentence was commuted to a severe whipping by reason of insanity. Perhaps the most notable use of the death penalty was in the execution of the Native Americans convicted of the murder of John Sassamon; this helped lead to King Philip's War. Though nominally a capital crime, adultery was usually dealt with by public humiliation only. Convicted adulterers were often forced to wear the letters "A.D." sewn into their garments, much in the manner of Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter.
Several laws dealt with indentured servitude, a legal status whereby a person would work off debts or be given training in exchange for a period of unrecompensed service. The law required that all indentured servants had to be registered by the Governor or one of the Assistants, and that no period of indenture could be less than six months. Further laws forbade a master from shortening the length of time of service required for his servant, and also confirmed that any indentured servants whose period of service began in England would still be required to complete their service while in Plymouth.
Without a clear land patent for the area, the settlers settled without a charter to form a government, and as a result, it was often unclear in the early years what land was under the colony's jurisdiction. In 1644, "The Old Colony Line"—which had been surveyed in 1639—was formally accepted as the boundary between Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth.
The situation was more complicated along the border with Rhode Island. Roger Williams in 1636 settled in the area of Rehoboth, near modern Pawtucket. He was forcibly evicted in order to maintain Plymouth's claim to the area. Williams would move to the west side of the Pawtucket River to found the settlement of Providence, the nucleus for the colony of Rhode Island, which was formally established with the "Providence Plantations Patent" of 1644. As various settlers from both Rhode Island and Plymouth began to settle along the area, the exact nature of the western boundary of Plymouth became more unclear. The issue was not fully resolved until the 1740s, long after the dissolution of Plymouth Colony itself. Rhode Island had received a patent for the area in 1693, which had been disputed by Massachusetts Bay Colony. Rhode Island successfully defended the patent, and in 1746, a royal decree transferred the land along the eastern shore of the Narragansett Bay to Rhode Island, including the mainland portion of Newport County and all of modern Bristol County, Rhode Island.
Barnstable County on Cape Cod:
The English in Plymouth Colony fit broadly into three categories: Pilgrims, Strangers, and Particulars. The Pilgrims, like the Puritans that would later found Massachusetts Bay Colony to the north, were a Protestant group that closely followed the teachings of John Calvin. However, unlike the Puritans, who wished to reform the Anglican church from within, the Pilgrims saw it as a morally defunct organization, and sought to remove themselves from it. The name "Pilgrims" was actually not used by the separatists themselves. Though William Bradford used the term "pilgrims" to describe the group, he was using the term generically, to define the group as travelers on a religious mission. The term used by those we now call the Pilgrims was the "Saints". They used the term to indicate their special place among God's elect, as they subscribed to the Calvinist belief in predestination.
Besides the Pilgrims, or "Saints", the rest of the Mayflower settlers were known as the "Strangers". This group included the non-Pilgrim settlers placed on the Mayflower by the Merchant Adventurers, as well as later settlers who would come for other reasons throughout the history of the colony and who did not necessarily adhere to the Pilgrim religious ideals. A third group, known as the "Particulars", consisted of a group of later settlers that paid their own "particular" way to America, and thus were not obliged to pay the colony's debts.
The presence of the Strangers and the Particulars was a considerable annoyance to the Pilgrims. As early as 1623, a conflict between the two groups broke out over the celebration of Christmas, a day of no particular significance to the Pilgrims. Furthermore, when a group of Strangers founded the nearby settlement of Wessagussett, the Pilgrims were highly strained, both emotionally and in terms of resources, by their lack of discipline. They looked at the eventual failure of the Wessagussett settlement as Divine Providence against a sinful people.
The residents of Plymouth used terms to distinguish between the earliest settlers of the colony and those that came later. The first generation of settlers, generally thought to be those that arrived before 1627, called themselves the "Old Comers" or "Planters". Later generations of Plymouth residents would refer to this group as the "Forefathers".
A fairly comprehensive demographic study was done by historian John Demos for his seminal 1970 work on the Pilgrims, A Little Commonwealth. He reports that the colony's average household grew from 7.8 children per family for first-generation families, to 8.6 children for second-generation families, and to 9.3 for third-generation families. Child mortality also decreased over this time, with 7.2 children born to first-generation families living until their 21st birthday. That number increased to 7.9 children by the third generation. Life expectancy was higher for men than for women. Of the men who survived until the age of 21, the average life expectancy was 69.2 years. Over 55 percent of these men lived past 70, less than 15 percent died before the age of 50. For women, the numbers are much lower, owing to the difficulties inherent in childbearing. The average life expectancy of women at the age of 21 was only 62.4 years. Of these women, less than 45 percent lived past 70, and about 30 percent died before the age of 50.
The economic situation improved with the arrival of cattle in the colony. It is unknown when the first cattle arrived, but the division of land for the grazing of cattle in 1627 represented one of the first moves towards private land ownership in the colony. Cattle became an important source of wealth in the colony; the average cow could sell for ₤28 in 1638. However, the flood of immigrants during the Great Migration drove the price of cattle down. The same cows sold at ₤28 in 1638 were valued in 1640 at only ₤5. Besides cattle, there were also pigs, sheep, and goats raised in the colony
Agriculture also made up an important part of the Plymouth economy. The colonists adopted Native American agricultural practices and crops. They planted maize, squash, pumpkins, beans, and potatoes. Besides the crops themselves, the Pilgrims learned productive farming techniques from the Native Americans, such as proper crop rotation and the use of dead fish to fertilize the soil. In addition to these native crops, the colonists also successfully planted Old World crops such as turnips, carrots, peas, wheat, barley, and oats.
Overall, there was very little cash in Plymouth Colony, so most wealth was accumulated in the form of possessions. Since trade goods such as furs, fish, and livestock were subject to fluctuations in price, they were unreliable repositories of wealth. Goods such as clothes and furnishings represented an important source of economic stability for the residents.
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 contemporary accounts of life in Plymouth Colony have become both vital primary historical documents and literary classics. Of Plimoth Plantation by William Bradford and Mourt's Relation by Bradford, Edward Winslow, and others are both accounts written by Mayflower passengers, accounts that provide much of the information 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 eighteenth century. An edition of the work was illustrated by Paul Revere in 1772. Another work, 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 versions of "The Courtship of Miles Standish", the 1952 film Plymouth Adventure starring Spencer Tracy, and the 2006 TV documentary, produced by the History Channel, "Desperate Crossings:The True Story of the Mayflower".
Each year the United States celebrates a holiday known as Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. It is a recognized federal holiday, and frequently involves family gathering with a large feast, traditionally featuring a turkey. Civic recognition of the holiday typically include parades and football games. The holiday is meant to honor the "First Thanksgiving", which was a harvest feast held in Plymouth in 1621.
The annual Thanksgiving holiday is a fairly recent creation. Throughout the early nineteenth century, the U.S. government had declared a particular day as a national day of Thanksgiving, but these were one-time declarations meant to celebrate a significant event, such as victory in a battle. The modern Thanksgiving holiday is largely the work of a single woman, Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of Boston's Ladies' Magazine. Beginning in 1827, she wrote editorials calling for a national, annual day of thanksgiving to commemorate the Pilgrim's first harvest feast. After nearly 40 years, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared the first modern Thanksgiving to fall on the last Thursday in November. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Congress ultimately moved it to the fourth Thursday in November. In 1941, the holiday was recognized by Congress as an official federal holiday.
Among the modern traditions to develop alongside of the Thanksgiving holiday include the National Football League's Thanksgiving Classic games and the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City.
One of the enduring symbols of the landing of the Pilgrims is Plymouth Rock, a large granite outcropping of rock that was near their landing site at Plymouth. However, none of the contemporary accounts of the actual landing makes any mention that the Rock was the specific place of landing. The Pilgrims chose the site for their landing not for the rock, but for a small brook nearby that was a source of fresh water and fish.
The first identification of Plymouth Rock as the actual landing site was in 1741 by 90-year-old Thomas Faunce, whose father had arrived in Plymouth in 1623, several years after the supposed event. The rock was later covered by a solid-fill pier. In 1774, an attempt was made to excavate the Rock, but it broke in two. The severed piece was placed in the Town Square at the center of Plymouth. In 1880, the intact half of the rock was excavated from the pier, and the broken piece was reattached to it. Over the years, souvenir hunters have removed chunks from the rock, but the remains are now protected as part of the complex of living museums. These include the Mayflower II, a recreation of the original ship, Plimoth Plantation, an historical recreation of the original 1620 settlement, and the Wampanoag Homesite, which recreates a 17th century Indian village.
The General Society of Mayflower Descendants, or The Mayflower Society, is a genealogical organization comprised of individuals who have documented their descent from one or more of the 102 passengers who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620. The Society was founded at Plymouth in 1897. The group claims that tens of millions of Americans can claim descent from these passengers. They offer research services to people seeking to establish family connections to the Mayflower passengers.