Plymouth Colony
The Plymouth Colony, founded in 1620 in what is now Massachusetts, was one of the first English ventures at overseas colonization, only being beaten by Jamestown
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Origins
The Pilgrims left England in the first place to escape religious persecution at the hands of the Anglicans, they believed that the Church of England was still too Catholic in its practices and wanted a complete overhaul of the entire English church.[1] More will be said about their beliefs in the Puritan section of this article. The Pilgrims left England in the year of 1609 as refugees fleeing to the relatively welcoming Netherlands, the Dutch being fellow Calvinists at the time.[2] However, when they arrived they found the Netherlands to be a strange place, their hometown of Scrooby was rural, while the city of Leiden
They managed to obtain a land patent from the Plymouth Company
When the Pilgrims arrived at Cape Cod they realized they had no "patent" to settle there, which in the eyes of some of the colonists provided no legal basis for the colony to begin with. In response to these rumors and suspicions the leaders of the colony drafted and signed the Mayflower Compact
The Colony itself
The First Winter
Once at the colony things got off to a rocky start, the first winter was especially terrible. At first women, children, the elderly, and the infirm had to stay on the ship because the first structure of the colony, a simple wattle and daub
On March 16, 1621, the first formal contact with Native Americans ensued. Samoset
Massasoit and the Puritans agreed to what was essentially a mutual defense treaty
Thanksgiving
The first Thanksgiving was actually a rather solemn ceremony dedicated to God for the colony's "good fortune" when additional colonists and supplies arrived, and it was probably celebrated sometime in July. There was most likely very little revelry and merrymaking in light of the Pilgrims' Puritan beliefs.[6] The event we typically remember as the First Thanksgiving is more properly called a "harvest festival
Puritanism
As mentioned before, the Pilgrims fled England to escape religious persecution, but when they arrived in the New World they proceeded to do the exact same thing here they fled from over there, leading to the minister and dissident Roger Williams
The Puritans in New England were even more fundamentalist than their Puritan brethren in England proper, and the last vestiges of Puritanism in New England only died out in the 19th century, some two centuries after the Pilgrims first arrived at Plymouth Rock.[9]
Pequot War
The first major military struggle that involved the Plymouth Colony was the Pequot War
Formal hostilities began with the raiding of a boat and the murder of its captain, a Mr John Oldham, that was blamed on the Pequot and their allies. The English raided a Pequot village in retaliation, which was responded to by a raid by the Pequot themselves on Plymouth that lead to the deaths of 30 English colonists. The response to this was quick and brutal, with the Englishmen John Mason
The war would otherwise be a minor footnote in history if it weren't for the fact that the war in question lead to a mutual defense pact being formed among the then-nascent New England colonies, the "United Colonies of New England
See also
Notes
- However, they didn't fully pay off their debts until 1648, in part due to the colony's troubled early years as well as corruption and incompetence among the colony's leaders.
- The Compact also served essentially as the first constitution in the area that would eventually become the United States.
References
- "Puritanism in England"
- Addison, Albert Christopher. The Romantic Story of the Mayflower Pilgrims And Its Place in the Life of To-day. Published 1911.
- Philbrick, Nathaniel (2006). Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War. New York: Penguin Group. ISBN 0-670-03760-5.
- Rothbard, Murray (1975). ""The Founding of Plymouth Colony"". Conceived in Liberty. 1. Arlington House Publishers.
- "Samoset Biography".
- "Fast and Thanksgiving Days of Plymouth Colony"
- "First Thanksgiving - Primary Sources"
- "God, Government, and Roger Williams' Big Idea" - Smithsonian Magazine
- "Puritanism in New England"
- "Perspectives: The Pequot War"