William Bradford

When James I began to persecute Separatists in 1609, Bradford fled to the Netherlands, along with many members of the congregation. These Separatists went first to Amsterdam before settling at Leiden. Bradford married his first wife, Dorothy May (1597 – December 7, 1620), on December 10, 1613 in Amsterdam. While at Leiden, he supported himself as a fustian weaver.

Signing of the Mayflower Compact, a painting by Edward Percy Moran, which hangs at the Pilgrim Hall Museum

Shifting alignments of the European powers (due to religious differences, struggles over the monarchies and intrigues within the ruling Habsburg clan) caused the Dutch government to fear war with Catholic Spain, and to become allied with James I of England. Social pressure (and even attacks) on the separatists increased in the Netherlands. Their congregation's leader, John Robinson, supported the emerging idea of starting a colony. Bradford was in the midst of this venture from the beginning. The separatists wanted to remain Englishmen (although living in the Netherlands), yet wanted to get far enough away from the Church of England and the government to have some chance of living in peace. Arrangements were made, and William with his wife sailed for America in 1620 from Leiden aboard the Mayflower.

Bas-relief on Bradford Street in Provincetown depicting the signing of the Mayflower Compact
On December 7, 1620, before the colony was established, Bradford's wife died. Dorothy Bradford died while the Mayflower was at anchor in Provincetown Harbor. However, there are no contemporary accounts of the circumstances of her death, only a later mention of drowning by Cotton Mather in Magnalia Christi Americana. Bradford included only brief mention of her passing in his own writing. There is a widely circulated story that she committed suicide because the Mayfower was a moored ship, but this is derived from a work of historical fiction published in the June, 1869 issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine. This claims that they had decided to leave their young son in the Netherlands, and his wife was so stricken with sadness that she took her own life. Regardless of this fictional treatment, there is no proof of suicide. The first winter in the new colony was a terrible experience. Half the colonists perished, including the colony's leader, John Carver. Bradford was selected as his replacement in the spring of 1621. From this point, his story is inextricably linked with the history of the Plymouth Colony.

William Bradford's second wife, came to Plymouth aboard the Anne in July 1623, her two sons following after 1627 and married Governor Bradford on August 14, 1623 at Plymouth. They had three children, William, Mercy, and Joseph. Alice also helped to raise John, the son of his first marriage. William Bradford died at Plymouth, and was interred at Plymouth Burial Hill.
Some historians feel that Bradford's greatest achievement was in abandoning the system of communal agriculture initially practiced in the colony and introducing a system of privatized production, with land allotted to each family. These historians contend that the colonists produced more by farming for themselves, rather than for the community.

Bradford kept a handwritten journal detailing the history of the first 30 years of Plymouth Colony. Large parts of this journal were published as Of Plymouth Plantation, and have been republished a number of times. (It is currently in print as ISBN 0-07-554281-1.) Bradford, along with Edward Winslow and others, contributed material to George Morton, who merged everything into a book, published in London in 1622, nicknamed Mourt's Relation, which was primarily a journal of the colonists' first years at Plymouth.

The Mayflower, the Pilgrims' voyage

http://www.mayflowerhistory.com/History/history.php

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Initially, the plan was for the voyage to be made in two vessels, the other being the smaller Speedwell. The first voyage of the ships departed Southampton, England, on August 5, 1620; but the Speedwell developed a leak, and had to be refitted at Dartmouth.

On the second attempt, the ships reached the Atlantic Ocean but again were forced to return to Dartmouth because of the Speedwell's leak.

It would later be revealed that there was in fact nothing wrong with the Speedwell. The crew had sabotaged it in order to escape the year long commitment of their contract.

After reorganisation, the final sixty-six day voyage was made by the Mayflower alone, leaving Plymouth, England on September 6. With 102 passengers plus crew, each family was allotted a very confined amount of space for personal belongings.

The ship probably had a crew of twenty-five to thirty, along with other hired personnel; however, only the names of five are known, including John Alden. William Bradford, who penned our only account of the Mayflower voyage, wrote that John Alden (archaic spellings) "was hired for a cooper [barrel-maker], at South-Hampton, where the ship victuled; and being a hopefull yong man, was much desired, but left to his owne liking to go or stay when he came here; but he stayed, and maryed here."

The intended destination was an area near the Hudson River, in "North Virginia". However the ship was forced far off-course by inclement weather and drifted well north of the intended Virginia settlement. As a result of the delay, the settlers did not arrive in Cape Cod till the onset of a harsh New England winter. The settlers ultimately failed to reach Virginia where they had already obtained permission from the London Company to settle. To establish legal order and to quell increasing strife within the ranks, the settlers wrote and signed the Mayflower Compact after the ship dropped anchor at the tip of Cape Cod on November 11, in what is now Provincetown Harbor.

The settlers, upon initially setting anchor, explored the snow-covered area and discovered an empty Native American village. The curious settlers dug up some artificially-made mounds, some of which had stored corn while others were burial sites. The settlers stole the corn, sparking friction with the locals. They explored the area of Cape Cod for several weeks and decided to relocate after a difficult encounter with the local native Americans, the Nausets.

During the winter the passengers remained on board the 'Mayflower', suffering an outbreak of a contagious disease described as a mixture of scurvy, pneumonia and tuberculosis. When it ended, there were only 53 persons still alive, half of the passengers and half of the crew. In spring, they built huts ashore, and on March 21, 1621, the surviving passengers left the 'Mayflower'.

On April 5, 1621, the Mayflower set sail from Plymouth to return to England, where she arrived on May 6, 1621.

The puritans

Were English Reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were frustrated by the slow progress of the Reformation in the Anglican Church. They left a legacy of theological writing that is unsurpassed in church history. Their doctrine tended to be Calvinistic and Presbyterian, and their finest writings were both polemic and devotional treatments of theology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritan

http://endtimepilgrim.org/puritans10.htm