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Of Plymouth Plantation 1620 - 1647.
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I remember the first time I stepped onto a sailing ship and that was the full-size replica of the Cutty Sark at Greenwich, London. The younger me descended below decks and started to imagine the enormity of risking everything on an expedition into the unknown. Since that time, I’ve become an eighteenth-century scholar, able to channel my wonder at the age of sail into researching, teaching, writing, and broadcasting about many aspects of the period. I hope the books on this list help you journey all over the globe with a sense of what it was like to trust your life to a self-contained floating world heading into unchartered waters.
Philbrick had me from his opening sentence: “We all want to know how it was in the beginning.” He makes a familiar history fresh, asking how fifty years of peace at Plymouth Rock between the Mayflower Pilgrims and local Wampanoags could end in war.
Within this overarching theme, it’s the small details I remember, such as how Philbrick interviewed Captain Alan Villiers who sailed a 1957 replica of the Mayflower. In a violent transatlantic storm, Villiers tested a Jacobean sailing technique that hadn’t been tried for centuries, furling the sails and securing the helm into the wind. Its boxy shape kept Mayflower II perfectly balanced, bobbing upright in the gale. With accounts like this, I felt Philbrick had done his research and gave real credibility to his description of the voyage and its aftermath.
Nathaniel Philbrick, bestselling author of 'In the Heart of the Sea', reveals the darker side of the Pilgrim fathers' settlement in the New World, which ultimately erupted in bloody battle some fifty years after they first landed on American soil.
Behind the quaint and pious version of the Mayflower story usually taught in American primary schools is a tumultuous and largely untold tale of violence, subterfuge and epic drama.
For amidst the friendships and co-operation that sprang up between the settlers and indigenous people, whose timely assistance on more than one occasion rescued the Pilgrims from otherwise certain death, a…
Growing up in Plymouth, MA, I was steeped in the history of the Pilgrims, eventually working as a tour guide at Plimoth-Patuxet. After I retired as professor emerita from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I wrote and published a series of mysteries. That experience and my New England background buoyed my confidence that I could write about a Pilgrim woman, keeping true to the history of the Plimoth Colony. The story of Mary Allerton Cushman’s lifewas the result. It was long-listed for the Devon and Cornwall International Novel Prize.
James Deetz was an American anthropologist and his wife, a cultural historian. Their book was the result of studying Plymouth Colony court transcripts, wills, probate listings, and rare firsthand accounts, and then combining the facts with archeological evidence from various sites in Plymouth. This book shows a reality of the Pilgrims and Pilgrim life very different from the straight-laced, nearly mythical images from the 18th and 19th centuries: an all too human group who wore bright clothing, drank, believed in witches, had premarital sex and adulterous affairs, and committed petty and serious crimes. This book is informative and eye-opening.
This title sets out to debunk the longstanding ideas about the life of the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth Colony. The authors describe the arrival of the English settlers, the early years of the settlement, and the myths which have developed since.
Growing up in Plymouth, MA, I was steeped in the history of the Pilgrims, eventually working as a tour guide at Plimoth-Patuxet. After I retired as professor emerita from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I wrote and published a series of mysteries. That experience and my New England background buoyed my confidence that I could write about a Pilgrim woman, keeping true to the history of the Plimoth Colony. The story of Mary Allerton Cushman’s lifewas the result. It was long-listed for the Devon and Cornwall International Novel Prize.
Children of the 17th and 18th centuries were raised far more strictly than today. In the 17th century, initially without schools, they would likely be uneducated. Encouraged to walk as soon as possible, children would be incorporated into the work of the family at an early age, to ensure the survival of the community. Alice Morse Earl conducted years of research, based on letters, official records, diaries, and other accounts to create and detailed portrait of a child’s world of that time. For me, it answered questions, such as: Did the children work? How were they educated? How did parents teach respect, manners, and religion? How were children disciplined? Were children allowed to play and what toys or games did they have? I found her book to be enormously helpful in creating the life of Mary Allerton as a child in the Plymouth Colony and the home life of the…
What did the little ones do back in the days when "children should be seen and not heard"? How were they schooled, what did they wear, and which games did they play? This eye-opening survey revisits the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for an illustrated look at the lives of Colonial America's youngest citizens The first American historian to chronicle everyday life of the colonial era, Alice Morse Earle conducted years of research, based on letters, official records, diaries, and other accounts. A vivid portrait emerges, depicting a child's world of hornbooks and primers; lessons in manners and religion; methods of…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
Growing up in Plymouth, MA, I was steeped in the history of the Pilgrims, eventually working as a tour guide at Plimoth-Patuxet. After I retired as professor emerita from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I wrote and published a series of mysteries. That experience and my New England background buoyed my confidence that I could write about a Pilgrim woman, keeping true to the history of the Plimoth Colony. The story of Mary Allerton Cushman’s lifewas the result. It was long-listed for the Devon and Cornwall International Novel Prize.
Former Historian General of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, Stratton writes a complete treatment of the history and genealogy of the Plymouth Colony. While the book contains verbatim transcriptions of important documents and an annotated bibliography, which are manna to the writer of historical fiction, it also has informative chapters on law and order, inheritance, morality and sex, everyday life and manners, freemen and servants, and the diaspora of Pilgrim families to other towns in the colony. Thus, along with other books listed here, the research done by the author helped me to create the real world of the Plymouth Colony and allowed me to reinforce the concept that the Pilgrims were not so different from their millions of descendants four centuries later.
This is the first truly complete treatment of the history and genealogy of Plymouth Colony. It includes a concise history of the colony, both chronologically and topically, and more than 300 biographical sketches of its inhabitants. Richly documented and illustrated with maps and photographs, the three-dimensional Plymouth Colony: Its History & People, 1620-1691 was written for historians and genealogists alike and provides and in-depth view of this important epoch in American history. The researcher will find the verbatim transcriptions of important contemporary documents in the eleven appendices invaluable, and the annotated bibliography clearly describes the abundance of primary and secondary…
In researching the next book in my Kindred Spirit series I intended to tell the story of the “Angel of Hadley,” which occurred in my hometown. As I researched the topic, I fell into more, and more convoluted rabbit holes. For example, the Indian who led King Philip's War was Metacom, son of the great sachem Massasoit who signed the mutual defense treaty with Governor Carver of Plymouth Plantation when they first met in 1621. The rapid descent from 40 years of peace into the proportionally bloodiest war to take place in what is now America, was spellbinding. And my research continues.
The best source of information about the Pilgrim journey from their origin as Puritan/Dissenters in Scrooby, England. Bradford, who would serve multiple terms as governor of Plymouth Plantation, gives the lie to many of our commonly held beliefs about the Pilgrims and their experiences fleeing England, living in Holland, and coming to New England. He is detailed, candid, and very readable. Seeing the story from his first-person point of view helped me to see the Pilgrims as flawed individuals, whether appropriating a tribe's entire cache of seed corn on their first day on Cape Cod, Bradford's being upended in a snare set to trap animals, or their first Indian guest entering the settlement and asking for beer, it is not, ironically, the traditional Pilgrim story.
My idea for a book about Thanksgiving was born in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. I was in downtown Manhattan that awful morning on my way to my office at the Wall Street Journal, directly across from the World Trade Center. I stood on the street and watched the towers fall. Two months later, as Thanksgiving approached, I found myself reading William Bradford’s first-person account of the First Thanksgiving. I wanted to learn more about this little kernel of history and how it grew into a cherished national holiday. I wrote several articles for the Journal about the holiday. Writing a book was the logical next step.
Of Plymouth Plantation is Governor William Bradford’s first-person account of the Pilgrims’ journey to America and the adventures, trials, and tribulations they encountered there. It’s a monumental story, and Bradford’s telling of it is thrilling. Only 53 Pilgrims survived their first winter in the New World, half the number of men, women, and children who had sailed on the Mayflower. But now, Bradford writes, everyone was “well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty.” That included “a great store of wild turkeys” and much more. Does that sound familiar? Happy Thanksgiving.
In honor of the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower's landing at Plymouth in 1620, a new edition of William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation -- a first person narrative account of the pilgrims' adventures, challenges, and triumphs during their early years in America. This edition is derived from the 1890 abridged version published by Effingham, Maynard & Co., which has been further lightly edited to make it more accessible to students and the modern reader. This edition also includes a brief account of the life of William Bradford from that edition.
William Bradford (1590 – 1657) originally hailed from Yorkshire in…
I grew up thinking that being adopted didn’t matter. I was wrong. This book is my journey uncovering the significance and true history of adoption practices in America. Now, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, the renewed debate over women’s reproductive rights places…
Greg Shed is a self-taught California illustrator specializing in Americana. In addition to commercial work and portraits, he has illustrated more than a dozen children’s books—several of which are about American history. A dedicated researcher, Greg has traveled from the Plymouth colony to the American prairie in search of authenticity and details. He has consulted with Native American craftsmen on the manufacture of native period attire. He is known for capturing golden light in his paintings, which often depict Native American cultures, wildlife, and landscapes.
Pilgrim Voices provides a fascinating first-hand description of pilgrims’ lives told through actual diaries and journals. Reading some of these 400-year-old accounts inspired me to visit the recreated 17th-century village of Plymouth Colony to gain a better sense of the environment as it once was in its wild and untamed state, along with the living conditions, customs, foods, and clothing of some of America’s first European settlers in the early 1600s.
A Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People and a C. S. Lewis Noteworthy book: A rich history of the pilgrim experience, as recorded in real diaries
Nearly four hundred years after the pilgrims left England in search of a better life, their stories still resonate with Americans today. In this account, the pilgrims’ own writings of their adventures and hardships are brought to life for young readers.
This touching account shows the pilgrims’ voyage on the Mayflower, their first meeting with the native people, and the hardships of hunger, illness, and death that they faced during their first…
I write about the often contentious role of religion in U.S. history, from modern evangelicals to nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints to the Pilgrims of the Mayflower. In many history books these religious men and women function either as saints or sinners. Instead of resorting to caricatures, it’s worth taking the time to get to know people of the past in all the marvelous strangeness of their beliefs, practices, and habits. I am a professor of Religious Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
If you want to learn about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony, the most essential source is Mayflower passenger and longtime governor William Bradford’s own history. Bradford explains the circumstances that led a portion of his congregation to transplant themselves to the New World, then goes year by year through the colony’s first three decades. His annals aren’t dry, though. Bradford also has a wicked sense of humor. If would-be colonists weren’t tough enough for what awaited them in New England, they should remain across the Atlantic “till at least they be mosquito proof.” You shouldn’t only read Bradford. He’s a partisan in this contentious history, after all. But you shouldn’t pass on one of the great works of seventeenth-century American non-fiction.
I write about the often contentious role of religion in U.S. history, from modern evangelicals to nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints to the Pilgrims of the Mayflower. In many history books these religious men and women function either as saints or sinners. Instead of resorting to caricatures, it’s worth taking the time to get to know people of the past in all the marvelous strangeness of their beliefs, practices, and habits. I am a professor of Religious Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
Most people knows that the Pilgrims were religious, but most Americans today know very little about the beliefs and practices that animated the separatists who chose to leave England and the Dutch Republic and cross the ocean. Francis Bremer is the best possible guide to this essential part of the Pilgrim story. Bremer knows puritanism better than anyone, and he knows how to fit the Pilgrims into that larger framework. In One Small Candle (the title comes from William Bradford’s history), Bremer explains how the lay leadership of men and women was central to separatism and to the religious organization of the colony.
Four hundred years ago, a group of men and women who had challenged the religious establishment of early seventeenth-century England and struggled as refugees in the Netherlands risked everything to build a new community in America. The story of those who journeyed across the Atlantic on the Mayflower has been retold many times, but the faith and religious practices of these settlers has frequently been neglected or misunderstood.
In One Small Candle, Francis J. Bremer focuses on the role of religion in the settlement of the Plymouth Colony and how those values influenced political, intellectual, and cultural aspects of New…
This irreverent biography provides a rare window into the music industry from a promoter’s perspective. From a young age, Peter Jest was determined to make a career in live music, and despite naysayers and obstacles, he did just that, bringing national acts to his college campus atUW-Milwaukee, booking thousands of…
In researching the next book in my Kindred Spirit series I intended to tell the story of the “Angel of Hadley,” which occurred in my hometown. As I researched the topic, I fell into more, and more convoluted rabbit holes. For example, the Indian who led King Philip's War was Metacom, son of the great sachem Massasoit who signed the mutual defense treaty with Governor Carver of Plymouth Plantation when they first met in 1621. The rapid descent from 40 years of peace into the proportionally bloodiest war to take place in what is now America, was spellbinding. And my research continues.
Sub-titled “A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth,” this first-person account of the Pilgrims' early years includes detail not found in Bradford's account. As Winslow's purpose was to attract new immigrants to support Plymouth Plantation, he tends to paint a much rosier picture than the more straightforward Bradford. This book's advantage is that it was written contemporaneously.
This great work is in the Second Printing 2006. The first printing was 1985. Mourt's Relation was originally printed in 1622 and is the first-hand published account of the coming of the Pilgrims to the New World. It is an invaluable primary resource for Pilgrim history and provides the first documented report giving an account of the harvest feast that we know as the First Thanksgiving. A must for educators and every home.
