The Mayflower

Bradford

Winslow

�In ye name of God, Amen.�We whose names are underwritten, the loyall subjects of our dread and soveraigne Lord, King James, by ye grace of God, of Great Britain, France, & Yreland king, defender of ye faith, &c., haveing undertaken for ye glorie of God, and advancemente of ye Christian faith, and honour to our king and countrie, a voyage to plant ye first colonie in ye Northerne parts of Viriginia, doe by these presents solemnly and mutually in ye presense of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves togeather into a civill body politick, for our better ordering & preservation & furtherance of ye ends aforesaid; and by vertue hearof to enacte, constitute, and frame such just & equall lawes, ordinances, Acts, constitutions, & offices from time to time, as shall be thought most meete & convenient for ye generall goode of ye Colonie, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. Yn witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cap-Codd ye 11. of November, in ye year of ye raigne of our soveraigne lord, King James, of England, France, & Yreland ye eighteenth, and Scotland ye fiftie fourth, Ano: Dom. 1620.�

John Carver, 1st Governor

William Bradford, 2nd Governor.

Edward Winslow III, 3rd Governor, a man of 25, son of Edward Winslow and Eleanor Pelham

William Brewster	James Chilton (1st to die, father of Mary Chilton)
Isaac Allerton
Myles Standish
John Alden	John Cracston
Samuel Fuller	John Billington
Christopher Martin	Moses Fletcher
William Mullins	John Goodman
William White	Degory Priest
Richard Warren	Thomas Williams
John Howland	Gilbert Winslow
Stephen Hopkins	Edmond Margeson
Edward Tilley	Peter Brown
John Tilley	Richard Britterige
Francis Cooke	George Soule
Thomas Rogers	Richard Clark
Thomas Tinker	Richard Gardiner
John Rigdale	John Allerton
Edward Fuller	Thomas English
John Turner	Edward Doty
Francis Eaton	Edward Leister

The women were brought ashore on the 13th to wash the clothes that had remained unwashed during the long voyage. Legend has it that "light-hearted� Mary Chilton, age 13, leaped off the dory before it was beached so that she would be the first Englishwoman to set foot in New England. She was later to marry John Winslow.

After several probes of possible sites for settlement during late November and early December 1620 in the Mayflower�s shallop, a band of the men, William Bradford among them, landed at Plymouth on Monday, 11 December. Upon returning to the Mayflower that same day, William was told of a personal tragedy: Dorothy had accidently fallen from the ship on the 7th and drowned.

On Saturday the 16th the Mayflower was brought to Clark�s Island, a mile and a half off of Plymouth. A couple of days were spent in exploration of the local sites. Agreement was finally reached on Wednesday the 20th to settle at Plymouth, rather than Clark�s Island. (Since Plymouth was the last place from which they left England, the Pilgrims named the new colony New Plymouth.) Temporary shelters were erected on Thursday and, after a storm on Friday, work on the new village was begun in earnest on Saturday the 23rd. They observed the sabbath on Sunday and returned to work on Monday, Christmas Day, in keeping with Puritan beliefs.

The Mayflower stayed in port until the following 5 April when it returned to England. Captain Christopher Jones (after whom the Jones River was named) had needed to wait until the Pilgrims could be assured of their survival and until the remaining half of his crew who had survived the winter recovered their health. Indeed, more than half of the Pilgrims� number perished in that first terrible winter in the new world, from December to March, from its privations, hunger and the "Great Sickness� (a combination of scurvy and respiratory illness). The stone over their grave is inscribed:

This monument marks the first burying ground in Plymouth of the Passengers of the Mayflower. Here, under cover of darkness, the first dwindling Company laid their dead, levelling the earth above them lest the Indians should learn how many were the graves.

It wasn�t until the harvest in the fall of 1623 that sufficient food was produced to last the colonists for a full year. But several years of hardship remained.

John Winthrop (born 22 January 1588 Groton, England�died 26 March 1649 Boston, Massachusetts) led the mass migration of the first settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Twelve ships left Southhampton and landed at Naumkeag (Salem). The ships were the Mary and John (the first to leave and arrive), Ambrose, Jewel, Talbot, Mayflower, Whale, William and Francis, Trial, Hopewell, Charles, Arbella (the flagship of Winthrop) and Success (the last to arrive). Many more ships followed. The Company moved its capitol from Salem to Charlestown in July.

The majority of the settlers (60%) came from East Anglia and neighboring counties: Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Hunting-donshire and Lincolnshire, plus parts of Bedfordshire and Kent, as shown in the map below. Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex were the core of the Puritan migration. They brought with them the folkways of East Anglia, which are still evident in New England today, as well as in other parts of America to which they migrated. By 1660 more than sixty percent of Massachusetts towns named after English communities were named from the eastern counties.

Compared to the rest of England, the Puritan influence was particularly strong in the east. The "Yankee Twang� derives directly from the seventeenth century "Norfolk Whine.� The "Salt Box� and "Cape Code� styles of architecture were taken from the eastern counties, as was the penchant for baked foods (including the famous baked beans and pies) and conservative dress. The strong orientation towards family and abhorrence of the single state had its roots in East Anglia, as did the attitudes towards religion, witchcraft, respect for elders, sex and the naming and raising of children. East Anglia also provided the predominant settlement pattern of nuclear villages, satellite hamlets and scattered farmsteads, as well as town government by Selectmen and the concept of "ordered liberty.�