89 Fun Facts About Pilgrims

In which Nottinghamshire village did the future Mayflower Separatists meet secretly at a manor house?

Scrooby Manor belonged to the Archbishop of York, so the Separatists who met there from about 1606 were defying the very churchman who was their landlord.

Before crossing the Atlantic, the Separatists spent about a dozen years living in which Dutch city?

The Separatists settled in Leiden in 1609, many of them working in its cloth and textile trades, before the first group sailed for America in 1620.

Which pastor led the congregation in Holland but never made the crossing, dying there in 1625?

John Robinson stayed in Holland with the larger part of the congregation and died there in 1625; his son Isaac joined the colony in 1631.

What were the London investors who financed the Pilgrims' voyage called?

The Merchant Adventurers, about seventy London investors, were to be repaid in fish, timber and furs; the colonists did not clear the debt until the 1640s.

Which patch of coast was the Pilgrims' intended destination when they set out in 1620?

The mouth of the Hudson River lay at the northern edge of the Virginia Company's territory; the Dutch founded New Netherland there instead.

What was the name of the leaky companion ship that twice forced the Mayflower back to port in 1620?

The Speedwell leaked so badly that both ships turned back twice; she was sold, and after refitting made several successful voyages for her new owners.

Under what name had the Pilgrims' 60-ton companion ship fought against the Spanish Armada in 1588?

Built in 1577 as the Swiftsure, she served against the Armada in 1588, was decommissioned in 1605 and renamed after a wildflower by her new owners.

How many passengers did the Mayflower carry across the Atlantic in 1620?

The Mayflower carried 102 passengers plus roughly 30 crew, all packed into a cargo ship about 100 feet long.

Once the Mayflower finally left England alone on 6 September 1620, how many days did the crossing take?

The crossing took 66 days, from 6 September to the anchoring off Cape Cod on 11 November 1620; the return in spring 1621 took about a month.

Who was the master (captain) of the Mayflower on its 1620 voyage?

Christopher Jones, part-owner as well as master of the Mayflower, brought her home in May 1621 and died in March 1622.

What did Mayflower passengers use to force a storm-cracked main beam back into place mid-ocean?

A great iron screw the passengers had brought from Holland, probably for house-building, was used to jack the cracked main beam back into place.

Which passenger was washed overboard in a storm and hauled back aboard after grabbing a trailing rope?

John Howland grabbed a topsail halyard trailing in the water and was hauled back with a boat hook; he lived until 1673 and served as a colony deputy.

Which Mayflower passenger served as Plymouth Colony's physician and a deacon of its church?

Samuel Fuller, a church deacon, acted as Plymouth's physician for more than a decade; he died in the sickness that swept the colony in 1633.

Who was the only passenger to die during the actual Atlantic crossing?

William Butten, a young servant of the colony's physician, died on 6 November 1620, shortly before Cape Cod was sighted on the 9th.

Which Mayflower passenger had been shipwrecked in Bermuda in 1609 en route to Jamestown?

Stephen Hopkins survived the 1609 wreck of the Sea Venture on Bermuda, an episode often cited as an inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest.

The Mayflower first dropped anchor on 11 November 1620 in which Cape Cod harbour?

The Mayflower anchored in Provincetown Harbor on 11 November 1620 and stayed about five weeks while parties explored the Cape before settling on Plymouth.

How many men signed the Mayflower Compact aboard ship in November 1620?

41 men signed; the list of names comes from Nathaniel Morton's 1669 New England's Memorial, since the original document does not survive.

What did the Separatists call the non-Puritan passengers recruited by the Mayflower's investors?

The Separatists called them Strangers; some of these hired passengers talked of going their own way ashore, which is why the Compact was drawn up before landing.

Who was the first signer of the Mayflower Compact and the colony's first governor?

John Carver, the first signer, was chosen governor aboard ship; he died in April 1621 after collapsing in the fields on a hot day, and his wife followed within weeks.

In what year was the 1620 shipboard agreement first given the name 'Mayflower Compact'?

The name first appeared in 1793, in a Forefathers' Day address at Plymouth; for its first 170 years it was simply called the agreement or combination.

What was the first name of the first English baby born in New England, in 1620?

Peregrine White was born aboard the Mayflower while it lay at anchor off Cape Cod in late November 1620, and he lived until 1704.

Roughly what share of the Mayflower's passengers died during the first winter of 1620-21?

About half the passengers died that winter; only around 52 were alive to see spring, and roughly half the crew died too.

Those who died in the first winter were buried on which rise opposite Plymouth Rock?

Cole's Hill, the rise above Plymouth Rock, was the burial ground; a granite sarcophagus placed there in 1920 holds bones unearthed on the hill in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Which Pilgrim elder sailed with his wife and two sons named Love and Wrestling?

William Brewster, the congregation's ruling elder, led worship at Plymouth until the first ordained pastor, Ralph Smith, arrived in 1629.

Which 1619 book from the Pilgrims' secret Dutch press made King James order a manhunt for the printer?

Perth Assembly, David Calderwood's attack on the king's church policy in Scotland, came off the press in 1619; its printer went into hiding for a year until it was time to sail.

Which Abenaki man startled the colonists on 16 March 1621 by greeting them in English?

Samoset, an Abenaki sagamore from the Maine coast, had learned English from fishermen at Monhegan Island; his first request of the colonists was for beer.

Squanto was kidnapped by an English captain in 1614 and sold in which Spanish city?

Squanto was taken to Málaga, where local friars intervened and took in some of the captives; he eventually reached England and returned to New England in 1619.

What did Squanto tell the colonists to bury with their corn seed as fertiliser?

Squanto showed them to bury dead fish in each corn hill; herring ran up the brook beside the settlement every April, just as the corn went in.

'Massasoit', the colonists' name for the Wampanoag leader, was a title meaning what?

Massasoit means Great Sachem; the leader's own name was Ousamequin, but the English took the title for his name and it has stuck.

Which Pilgrim leader nursed Massasoit back to health in 1623?

Edward Winslow tended the gravely ill Massasoit in March 1623, feeding him broth and scraping his tongue; the grateful sachem then warned him of a plot against the colony.

Which English names did the Plymouth court give Massasoit's sons Wamsutta and Metacomet?

The Plymouth court recorded the names Alexander and Philip in 1660: Wamsutta became Alexander and Metacomet became Philip, at the brothers' own request.

From which village, on the site of Plymouth, did Squanto originally come?

Squanto's people, the Patuxet, had lived on Plymouth harbour until an epidemic around 1616-19 emptied the village, leaving cleared fields for the colonists.

The Wampanoag translate their own name as what?

Wampanoag is usually rendered People of the First Light: their homeland faced the Atlantic sunrise across what are now south-eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Which Jamestown captain did the Pilgrims approach before hiring Myles Standish as military adviser?

They decided his price was too high and worried that his fame might make him a dictator.

At which short-lived settlement north of Plymouth did Myles Standish kill Massachusett leaders in 1623?

Wessagusset, a trading colony founded north of Plymouth in 1622, was where Standish killed Pecksuot and Wituwamat; the killings so frightened nearby peoples that many abandoned their villages.

Which Mayflower cooper, hired at Southampton, was the last surviving Compact signer when he died in 1687?

John Alden was hired at Southampton as the ship's cooper but chose to stay; he married Priscilla Mullins and died at Duxbury in 1687.

Which poet's 1858 The Courtship of Miles Standish invented a Pilgrim love triangle over Priscilla Mullins?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published the poem in 1858; it reportedly sold 10,000 copies in London on its first day, and the love story rests on family legend.

Which Mayflower passenger became the first person in Plymouth Colony to be hanged for murder, in 1630?

John Billington shot John Newcomen in 1630 and was hanged; Governor Bradford had earlier written that Billington 'is a knave, and so will live and die'.

Who was the last surviving Mayflower passenger, arriving aged about four and dying in 1699?

Mary Allerton married Thomas Cushman, who came on the second ship in 1621, raised eight children at Plymouth and is buried on Burial Hill.

The Fortune, second ship to reach Plymouth Colony in 1621, was seized on the way home by a warship from which country?

The ship had also arrived with 35 new mouths to feed and no provisions, forcing the colony onto half rations.

According to a colonist's 1621 letter, how many men did Massasoit bring to the harvest celebration?

A colonist's letter printed in 1622 says Massasoit came with some 90 men, nearly twice the number of surviving colonists.

How long did the 1621 harvest celebration at Plymouth last?

The celebration ran for three days; the colonists shot waterfowl, and the Wampanoag guests brought in five deer.

Whose 1841 footnote first called the 1621 harvest celebration the 'first Thanksgiving'?

Alexander Young added the label in a footnote to his 1841 Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers; the colonists' own first declared day of thanksgiving came in 1623.

When did the buckles on the popular Pilgrim image's hats and shoes first appear?

The buckles were added to the popular image in the 1800s as a sign of quaintness; the tall capotain hat was real, but no buckle ever sat on one.

What did the Pilgrims actually wear day to day, according to their estate inventories?

Estate inventories show bright solid colours in everyday wear, with reds, greens, violets and blues all listed; their religion had no objection to colour.

How old was Thomas Faunce when he identified Plymouth Rock as the landing place in 1741?

Thomas Faunce, then 94, said his father, who had arrived in 1623, had shown him the rock; the Pilgrims' own writings never mention one.

Roughly how much of the original Plymouth Rock is estimated to survive?

Only about a third of the original rock remains: it split in 1774 while being hauled to the town square, and pieces went to the Smithsonian and a Brooklyn church.

Bradford's manuscript history of the colony, lost in the Revolution, resurfaced in the 1850s in which London library?

The manuscript turned up in 1855 in the Bishop of London's library at Fulham Palace; it was returned to Massachusetts in 1897 and went to the State Library in Boston.

Bradford's line 'they knew they were pilgrimes' alludes to a passage in which book of the Bible?

The phrase echoes Hebrews 11:13, which describes the faithful as pilgrims on the earth; the name only caught on for the settlers in the 1790s.

Plymouth Colony ended as a separate colony in 1691 when it was merged into which new province?

The 1691 charter folded Plymouth into the new Province of Massachusetts Bay; Plymouth had never held a royal charter of its own, which left it powerless to resist.

The Mayflower's last record is a 1624 appraisal in which Thames-side district?

The 1624 appraisal at Rotherhithe valued the ship at just over 128 pounds; she is thought to have been broken up soon afterwards.

The Mayflower II replica, which crossed the Atlantic in 1957, was built in which Devon town?

Mayflower II was built at Upham's yard in Brixham and launched in 1956; in 1957 her captain, Alan Villiers, took the southerly trade-wind route to spare the rigging.

Which word did Plymouth's living-history museum drop from its name in 2020 over slavery associations?

The museum dropped Plantation in 2020; in the 1620s the word simply meant a colony, and the museum's English Village recreates the settlement as it stood in 1627.

What year is the only known life portrait of a Mayflower passenger dated to?

The portrait is dated 1651, when the sitter was in London on the colony's business; no likeness of any other Mayflower passenger was made in their lifetime.

The Pilgrims' Separatist congregations held 'Brownist' beliefs, named after which preacher?

Robert Browne argued in the 1580s that true churches were voluntary congregations, not whole nations; he led his followers into exile in Middelburg before later conforming.

What kind of boat, carried aboard in pieces, did the Pilgrims use to explore Cape Cod?

The shallop, a small open sailing boat stowed in sections aboard the Mayflower, was reassembled on the Cape and carried the exploring parties that chose Plymouth.

Before settling on Virginia, the Leiden group considered which South American region as a destination?

Guiana tempted them with a warm climate, but they feared the Spanish there; the looming end of the Dutch-Spanish truce in 1621 also pushed them to leave Holland.

The 1619 land patent the Pilgrims secured from the London Company was issued in whose name?

The patent was issued to John Wincob, a member of the Countess of Lincoln's household, but it was never used; the king would tolerate the group only unofficially.

Which English merchant persuaded the Pilgrims to drop talks with the Dutch and stick with the London Company?

Thomas Weston, a London ironmonger, came to Holland in 1620 promising his own investors' money, and talked the group out of the Dutch offer.

Which holiday did the Pilgrims spend as a normal working day in 1620, starting their first building?

Christmas was a day of no particular significance to the Pilgrims, who spent 25 December 1620 putting up the first structure of their new settlement.

Which meat did Massasoit's men add to the Pilgrims' 1621 harvest feast, a gift of five animals?

Venison came from five deer the Wampanoag guests brought, while the colonists supplied the waterfowl and wild turkeys.

Which big dog breed sailed on the Mayflower with a spaniel and chased a deer near Plymouth?

The mastiff and a spaniel are the two dogs known from the voyage; in January 1621 they chased a deer so far that the two colonists with them spent a freezing night lost in the woods.

Where did most Pilgrim women and children keep living through the first winter while houses went up?

On the ship: the Mayflower stayed at anchor as a floating home, and many women and children had not left it for six months by the time they moved ashore.

Which president, urged on by a magazine editor, began proclaiming a national Thanksgiving every year?

Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving for the final Thursday of November 1863, months after Gettysburg, and his successors repeated it every year.

Which vitamin-deficiency disease struck many Pilgrims during their first winter at Plymouth?

Scurvy comes from a lack of vitamin C, the price of a long voyage on stored food, and it combined with poor shelter and cramped shipboard conditions that winter.

Which Mary Had a Little Lamb author lobbied five presidents to make Thanksgiving a national holiday?

Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of the hugely popular Godey's Lady's Book, wrote to presidents from Zachary Taylor onward and is remembered as the Mother of Thanksgiving.

What had emptied the Native village whose cleared fields the Pilgrims took over to build Plymouth?

An epidemic had wiped out the village about three years before the Mayflower arrived, so the colonists found fields already cleared for planting.

Robert Weir's painting Embarkation of the Pilgrims hangs in the rotunda of which American building?

The US Capitol rotunda holds eight large history paintings, and this one hangs alongside the Landing of Columbus and the Baptism of Pocahontas.

Which slippery creatures did Squanto catch for the Pilgrims by treading them out of riverbed mud?

Eels were trodden out of the mud by Squanto, who caught them with his bare hands, and a colonist's journal calls them fat and sweet.

Which animal's pelts were the Pilgrims' chief export for paying off Plymouth Colony's debts?

Beaver pelts paid the colony's creditors, though in 1625 pirates seized one cargo in the English Channel and sold the furs cheaply in North Africa.

Which nickname is the town of Plymouth promoted under, thanks to its place in the Pilgrims' story?

America's Hometown is the slogan Plymouth trades on as a heritage destination, with the rock, a replica Mayflower and a living-history museum among its draws.

Which president laid the cornerstone of Cape Cod's 252-foot Pilgrim Monument in 1907?

Theodore Roosevelt laid the stone in August 1907, and his successor William Howard Taft dedicated the finished granite tower three years later.

In which English port were Pilgrim leaders held in 1607 after a sea captain betrayed their escape?

Boston in eastern England preserves the guildhall cells where the group is said to have been held; most were soon released and sailed for Holland the next year.

Which rite did the Pilgrims make a civil ceremony, finding no call in Scripture for a minister?

Marriage was a civil matter in Plymouth, performed by a magistrate, a custom the Pilgrims had seen in Holland and kept from the colony's first wedding in 1621.

Which Scripture translation, older than the King James Version, did the Pilgrims bring to Plymouth?

The Geneva Bible of 1560 was the Pilgrims' Bible; King James so disliked its marginal notes, which he thought seditious, that he backed a new translation without them.

Which future founder of Providence preached among the Pilgrims at Plymouth in the early 1630s?

Roger Williams preached regularly at Plymouth and was well liked, until he decided its church had not separated far enough from the Church of England.

Which orator's widely read 1820 bicentennial speech at Plymouth helped popularise the name Pilgrims?

Daniel Webster spoke of the Pilgrims again and again in his address of 22 December 1820, and the printed speech carried the name far beyond the town.

Which Hollywood star played the Mayflower's captain in the 1952 MGM film Plymouth Adventure?

Spencer Tracy starred opposite Gene Tierney in the fictionalised shipboard romance, which won the Oscar for Best Effects.

Which tribe sent Plymouth arrows tied in snakeskin, which the Pilgrims sent back full of gunpowder?

The Narragansett leader Canonicus sent the challenge, but he refused to keep the returned bundle, which was passed from place to place until it came back to Plymouth.

Which mocking nickname did Thomas Morton give Myles Standish, who had arrested him for Plymouth?

Captain Shrimp was Morton's jab at Standish in New English Canaan, the satire he published in 1637 after being shipped back to England.

Which settlement, known for its 80-foot maypole, did Myles Standish raid to arrest Thomas Morton?

Merrymount, in what is now Quincy, lost Morton on a charge of selling guns to the Natives, and the Puritans later renamed the place Mount Dagon after a Philistine god.

Myles Standish farmed and died in which town near Plymouth, where a 116-foot monument honours him?

Duxbury drew Standish and other Plymouth families out to larger farms from about 1628, and its hilltop monument to him was finished in 1898.

New England's first recorded duel, fought by two Mayflower servants in 1621, used which weapons?

Sword and dagger were the weapons, and the fight ended with one servant wounded in the hand and the other in the thigh.

Plymouth traders built a 1633 post at Windsor, the first English settlement in which modern state?

Connecticut's Windsor began as a Plymouth trading post set up by William Holmes, though settlers from Dorchester soon outnumbered and displaced the Plymouth men.

Which industry, the trade that made their Dutch refuge prosper, gave many exiled Pilgrims work?

Textiles employed many of the exiles: William Bradford set up as a weaver of fustian, a heavy cloth for men's clothing, while others found work in printing and brewing.

Which virtue does the 36-foot figure atop Plymouth's national monument to the Pilgrims personify?

Faith points to heaven with one hand and clutches a Bible in the other, while seated figures of Morality, Law, Education and Liberty surround the pedestal below.

Cape Cod's Pilgrim Monument is modelled on the Torre del Mangia, a tower in which Italian city?

Siena's medieval bell tower was the template, so an Italian-style campanile marks the Pilgrims' first landfall, and it is the tallest all-granite structure in the United States.

Which surname was shared by four small children sent on the Mayflower without their parents?

More was the name of Elinor, Jasper, Richard and Mary, shipped off after Samuel More accused his wife of adultery and denied that the children were his.

Which Plymouth holiday, first kept in 1769, marks the Pilgrims' landing with a succotash dinner?

Forefathers' Day falls on 22 December because of a slip in converting the calendar, since the landing is reckoned as the 21st, and its succotash is a broth with large pieces of fowl and meat.