Free Republic

The voyage to America for the Pilgrims was both a joyful as well as a traumatic undertaking. While the Pilgrims looked forward to building a new life in America, they were also leaving many members of their congregation behind in Holland. Many in the congregation chose not to make the trip or could not go for various reasons. This included the three year old son of William and Dorothy Bradford who they left behind with Dorothy’s parents in Amsterdam probably because they felt he was too frail to make the journey. William Bradford recorded the departure in his journal: ...With...

The English Separatist congregation, known to history as the Pilgrims, was known as the Scrooby Congregation before they made their way across the Atlantic in the Mayflower. Named for the Scrooby Manor, which was the Nottinghamshire English home of one of their leaders William Brewster, the congregation had gathered at the Brewster home for meetings and services while in in England. King James I, following the more lenient Queen Elizabeth I in 1602, rejected the demands of the separatists across England who sought independent religious congregations and who had accused the Church of England of being too much like the...

The Pilgrims had landed in a cold and forbidding land with no friends and rocky soil. More than a third of their population died of starvation and exposure during the first winter. Adding to the misery was the effects of their contract with their merchant sponsors which required them to share all property and the fruits of labor in common. William Bradford illustrated the problems associated with this arrangement in his diary: The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that...