William Bradford was born on March 19, 1590 near Doncaster, in Austerfield, Yorkshire. When he was only twelve years old, inspired by his reading of the Bible and by the sermons of a Puritan minister, Bradford began attending the meetings of a small group of Nonconformists. In 16th century England, the dominating church was quite powerful. They had accumulated more wealth than the Kings and Princes. The church had swayed the monarchy to make it illegal for Nonconformists to worship anything but the accepted doctrine publicly. This necessitated one small Protestant group to meet furtively in a private house. Later, when the group formally organized as a separate Congregational church, Bradford joined them. In 1609, at only 19 years of age, Bradford and many members of the congregation fled to the Netherlands. The Separatists went first to Amsterdam before eventually settling at Leiden. The group was aided by London profiteers and merchants, who lent them a ship and a crew as an investment. While the Pilgrim's motivations for moving may have been fine and pure, there is leeway to be allowed as to these investor's intentions.
Shifting alignments of the European powers, due to religious differences, and struggles over the monarchies, caused the Dutch government, fearing war with Catholic Spain, 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 away from Netherland's and, hopefully, England's influence. The separatists wanted to remain Englishmen, yet wanted to get far enough away from the Church of England, and the government, to have some chance of living in peace while worshipping as they saw fit. They quickly realized that they would have to get to a place far removed from both England and the Netherlands - America.
After making their investors aware of their plan, the Leiden Separatists bought a small ship, the Speedwell, in Holland. (They used the investor's monies.) In July of 1620, they embarked to Southampton, England to meet the Mayflower, which also had been chartered by their English investors. There, more Separatists and additional colonists joined them for the voyage.
On August 15, the Mayflower and Speedwell set sail for America. The Speedwell leaked so badly that both ships turned back to England, putting in first at Dartmouth and then at Plymouth. Finally, on September 16, 1620, the Mayflower, Mastered (Captain) by Christopher Jones, set sail, alone, for America.
The Mayflower was a sizable cargo ship, around 100 feet in length. She had served many years in the wine trade. Even so, with the crowding of 102 passengers plus crew, each family was allotted very little space.
The 66-day voyage was frequently stormy. At one point, a main beam cracked and had to be repaired using a large iron screw. When the passengers sighted Cape Cod, they realized that they had failed to reach Virginia, where they had permission to settle. The season was late, however, and supplies of food and water were low. They could go no further.
(Bradford, describing the Pilgrims' safe arrival at Cape Cod aboard the Mayflower)
"Being thus arived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees & blessed ye God of heaven, who had brought them over ye vast & furious ocean, and delivered them from all ye periles & miseries therof, againe to set their feete on ye firme and stable earth, their proper elemente. And no marvell if they were thus joyefull, seeing wise Seneca was so affected with sailing a few miles on ye coast of his owne Italy; as he affirmed, that he had rather remaine twentie years on his way by land, then pass by sea to any place in a short time; so tedious & dreadfull was ye same unto him.
But hear I cannot but stay and make a pause, and stand half amased at this poore peoples presente condition; and so I thinke will the reader too, when he well considers ye same. Being thus passed ye vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their preparation (as may be remembred by yt which wente before), they had now no friends to wellcome them, nor inns to entertaine or refresh their weatherbeaten bodys, no houses or much less townes to repaire too, to seeke for succoure…
Let it also be considred what weake hopes of supply & succoure they left behinde them, yt might bear up their minds in this sade condition and trialls they were under; and they could not but be very smale. It is true, indeed, ye affections & love of their brethren at Leyden was cordiall & entire towards them, but they had little power to help them, or them selves; and how ye case stode betweene them & ye marchants at their coming away, hath already been declared. What could not sustaine them but ye spirite of God & his grace? May not & ought not the children of these fathers rightly say : Our faithers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this willdernes; but they cried unto ye Lord, and he heard their voyce, and looked on their adversitie, &c. Let them therfore praise ye Lord, because he is good, & his mercies endure for ever.…"
Prospective colonies in British North America required permission, in the form of a "patent" or charter, from the King or from a company authorized by him, prior to formation. Before the Mayflower had sailed, the Pilgrims obtained the "First Peirce Patent" for a settlement in the northern part of the Virginia Colony. The Pilgrims landed north of this patent's boundaries.
When the Mayflower reached Cape Cod, anchoring in today's Provincetown Harbor, in November of 1620, some passengers justifiably questioned the authority of the group's leaders. That authority had been granted, by the Patent, for a settlement in the northern part of the Virginia Colony; It was not valid in New England.
The Pilgrims therefore drew up an agreement that the passengers would stay together in a "civil body politic." That agreement, known as the "Mayflower Compact," was signed on November 21, 1620. While the original Mayflower Compact has disappeared; we know its wording from the writings of William Bradford:
THE MAYFLOWER COMPACT
In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are under-written, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, etc.
Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.
In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the eleventh of November [New Style, November 21], in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord, King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Dom. 1620.
John Carver, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, William Brewster, Isaac Allerton, Miles Standish, John Alden, Samuel Fuller, Christopher Martin, William Mullins, William White, James Chilton, John Craxton, John Billington, Richard Warren, John Howland, Steven Hopkins, Edward Tilly, John Tilly, Francis Cook, Thomas Rogers, Thomas Tinker,
John Rigdale, Edward Fuller, John Turner, Francis Eaton, Moses Fletcher, Digery Priest, Thomas Williams, Gilbert Winslow, Edmond Margeson, Peter Brown, Richard Bitteridge,
Richard Clark Richard Gardiner, John Allerton, Thomas English, Edward Doten, Edward Liester, John Goodman, George Soule
The Mayflower Compact was, sensibly, an interim document that governed the colonists only until an official charter was obtained. It is an exaggeration to see it as the forerunner of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution.
The Mayflower Compact did, however, embody the guiding and lasting principles of the Pilgrims as expressed by their pastor John Robinson: separation of Church and state in a "civil body politic" and the rule of "just and equal laws."
For Bradford the hardships of the long ocean voyage did not end with landing at Plymouth. In December, while the Mayflower was anchored in Provincetown Harbor, Bradford and other men took a small boat ashore to scout for a place to land and build shelter. When they returned, Bradford learned that his young wife had fallen or jumped from the ship. Perhaps Dorothy Bradford was in despair when land was finally sighted and she did not see the hoped-for green hills of an earthly paradise. Beyond the ship lay only the bleak sand dunes of Cape Cod. That bitter winter, half the settlers were to die of cold, disease, and malnutrition.
The first winter in the new colony was a horrific experience. November in New England can be harsh to say the least and half the colonists perished on the boat, including the colony's leader, John Carver. Bradford was selected as his replacement in the spring of 1621; he was 31 years old.
The following year, Bradford was elected governor of the plantation. "If he had not been a person of more than ordinary piety, wisdom, and courage," the Puritan preacher Cotton Mather later recorded, Bradford would "have sunk" under the difficulties of governing such a shaky settlement. Bradford proved to be an exemplary leader, and he went on to be elected governor of the Colony no fewer than thirty times.
The following spring, on March 16, 1621, what was to become an important event took place, an Indian brave walked into the Plymouth settlement. The Pilgrims were frightened until the Indian called out "Welcome, Englishmen" in English!
His name was Samoset and he was an Abnaki Indian. He had learned English from the captains of fishing boats that had, years before, sailed off the coast of his village in what would become Maine. After staying the night in the Pilgrim camp, Samoset left the next day. He soon returned with another Indian named Squanto who spoke English even better than Samoset did. When pressed as to how he was so accomplished in the language, Squanto relayed the story of his kidnapping years earlier; his voyages across the ocean and his visits to Spain and England . In Spain, he gained an education at the hands of monks who had bought him and others. It was in England where he had learned English. Later, he was able to return to his homeland; only to find that his entire tribe no longer lived where he had left them. Most had perished due to illness and the few survivors had travelled afar being absorbed into other tribes and adopting their ways. He lived among the Pilgrims for the next 20 months showing them the ins and outs of adapting to living and surviving in North America. He taught how to tap the maple trees for sap. He taught them which local plants were poisonous and which had medicinal powers. Amazingly, despite his previous less-than-genteel encounters with the white man, he was the primary broker of peace between the colony and the neighboring indigenous peoples.
Squanto's importance to the Pilgrims was enormous and it can be said with no small amount of gravity that their early tribulations might surely have been extended without his help.
The summer was spent constructing homes and buildings for all. The harvest in October was very successful and the Pilgrims found themselves with enough food to put away for the winter. There was corn, fruits and vegetables, fish to be packed in salt, and meat to be cured over smoky fires.
The Pilgrims had much to celebrate, they had built homes in the wilderness, they had raised enough crops to keep them alive during the long coming winter, they were at peace with their Indian neighbors. They had beaten the odds and it was time to celebrate.
401 years ago, in early autumn of 1621, as was the English custom, Governor William Bradford proclaimed that a 3-day celebration of Thanksgiving was to be shared by the 53 surviving Pilgrims in order to give thanks to their Creator for their first successful American harvest.
"Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together."
Edward Winslow
They prepared and ate their fill; played games, ran races, marched, played drums and demonstrated their musket skills. Earlier, the preparations for the upcoming revelry was loud enough to have been heard by their Native American neighbors. Local Chief, Massasoit, and 90 braves warily came to investigate. They were summarily invited, along with Squanto and the other Indians, to join in the celebration. They joined in the feast and all celebrated as a way of worship in thanks for the bountiful year.
Exactly when the festival took place is uncertain, but it is believed the celebration took place in mid-October.
The Pilgrims did not call this harvest festival a "Thanksgiving," although they did give thanks to God. To them, a Day of Thanksgiving was purely religious. (The first recorded religious Day of Thanksgiving was held in 1623 in response to a providential rainfall.)
The religious day of thanksgiving and the harvest festival evolved into a single event: a yearly Thanksgiving, proclaimed by individual governors for a Thursday in November.
As the Plymouth Colony prospered and grew, sadly despite Bradford's efforts to hold it together, it also gradually disintegrated as a religious community. The ideal of the "City Upon a Hill," the Pilgrims' dream of an ideal society founded on religious principles, gradually gave way to the realities of life in the new land. Bradford's record of this grand experiment ends in disappointment. When more fertile areas for the settlement were found, and after Boston became a more convenient port to England, Plymouth then lost much of its population. "Thus was this poor church left," Bradford wrote in 1644, "like an ancient mother grown old and forsaken of her children...Thus, she that had made many rich became herself poor."
William Bradford died at Plymouth, and was interred at Plymouth Burial Hill. On his Grave is etched: "qua patres difficillime adepti sunt nolite turpiter relinquere" “What our forefathers with so much difficulty secured, do not basely relinquish.”
This is the lesson of Thanksgiving; It is a day to remember just how exceedingly difficult it was for the original Pilgrims, seeking freedom, to land on this continent. And once the sea journey was over, the suffering that took place before the original success. Though funded by profit seekers, how the original peoples, while simply seeking religious freedom, came to understand that, though a lofty goal, it was not enough - that only through a justly-governed republic, with vast liberties for ALL, are ALL freedoms made available. It is our continuing inherent obligation to strive mightily in today's world to continue to remember and honor our forefather's Thanks, and rightly add our own to it, in appreciation to our own Benevolent God!
It was these men and women I've written about who planted the first "seeds of independence"; Independence from England. Seeds that would, through the grace of God and the perseverance of our original settlers, sprout and grow for over 100 years, until harvested in the War of Independence.
It is our duty to remember these events as we are giving our own thanks to the Lord for all the blessings that He has bestowed on all of us in this great country.
It is our mandate that we do give thanks properly and that we do not become indolent and let these privileges be taken from us - that we are vigilant and never allow our precious way of life to end in the same fate as Plymouth's religious community - "Thus, she that had made many rich became herself poor."
I thank you so very much for allowing me to share this brief history, that is so important to me, with all of you as well! And DataCom Inc., as a company, especially during this Holiday, says Thank You All, So Very Much, to all of our customers!
