Squanto taught them how to plant corn, which became an important crop, as well as where to fish and hunt beaver. With peace secured thanks to Squanto, the colonists in Plymouth were able to concentrate on building a viable settlement for themselves rather than spend their time and resources guarding themselves against attack. Growth and Decline of the Plymouth Colony It is considered one of the most important firsthand accounts of early New England.ĭid you know? William Bradford’s descendants include chef Julia Child, Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist and Noah Webster, creator of Webster’s Dictionary. Bradford kept a voluminous journal chronicling the Mayflower’s voyage and the founding of Plymouth Colony that was published under the title Of Plymouth Plantation. READ MORE: 7 Famous Mayflower Descendantsīorn in England, he escaped with the Separatists to the Netherlands in 1609 when he was still a teenager to avoid persecution.
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He is credited with drafting major parts of Plymouth’s legal code and creating a community focused on religious tolerance and an economy centered on private agriculture. William Bradford (1590-1657) was a leader of the Separatist congregation, a key framer of the Mayflower Compact, and Plymouth’s governor for 30 years after its founding.
Though the Separatists were a minority in the group, they formed its powerful center, and would entirely control the colony’s government during its first 40 years. Signees include John Carver, Plymouth Colony’s first governor Myles Standish, an English military officer and military leader of the colony and preacher William Brewster, among. It included a provision that colonists would create and enact “laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices…” for the good of the colony. The Mayflower Compact set down laws for all Mayflower passengers to follow. Plymouth was the first colonial settlement in New England.įorty-one of the Mayflower’s 102 passengers were Pilgrims, separatists seeking religious freedom who referred to the rest of the travelers as “strangers.” The strangers argued that since the Mayflower did not land in Virginia, as originally planned, the contract with the Virginia Company was void. Though more than half of the original settlers died during that grueling first winter, the survivors were able to secure peace treaties with neighboring Native American tribes and build a largely self-sufficient economy within five years. In late December, the Mayflower anchored at Plymouth Rock, where the pilgrims formed the first permanent settlement of Europeans in New England. Two months later, the three-masted merchant ship landed on the shores of Cape Cod, in present-day Massachusetts. In September 1620, during the reign of King James I, a group of around 100 English men and women-many of them members of the English Separatist Church later known to history as the Pilgrims-set sail for the New World aboard the Mayflower. Growth and Decline of the Plymouth Colony.Surviving the First Year in Plymouth Colony.