Pilgrims Trivia
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This pilgrim trivia quiz has 89 free questions with answers and follows the Mayflower passengers from a Nottinghamshire manor house and a dozen years in Holland to the 66-day crossing, the Compact signed off Cape Cod, the deadly first winter and the alliance with Massasoit's Wampanoag. It covers the people (Bradford, Brewster, Standish, Squanto, Samoset, the Aldens, the babies born aboard), the ships and their fates, the 1621 harvest that later became 'the first Thanksgiving', and the myths: Plymouth Rock, black clothes and buckled hats. It suits classroom history rounds, Mayflower descendants, November pub quizzes and anyone who wants the story behind the holiday rather than the holiday itself. Easy questions cover the passenger count and the leaky companion ship; the hardest ask which book got a printer hunted across Europe and where the ship was last recorded. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia, Plimoth Patuxet Museums or Mayflower Society sources, and each question shows its citation once you have answered.
30 of 89 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Nottinghamshire village did the future Mayflower Separatists meet secretly at a manor house?
Scrooby
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.
Q 02Before crossing the Atlantic, the Separatists spent about a dozen years living in which Dutch city?
Leiden
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.
Q 03Which pastor led the congregation in Holland but never made the crossing, dying there in 1625?
John Robinson
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.
Q 04What were the London investors who financed the Pilgrims' voyage called?
the Merchant Adventurers
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.
Q 05Which patch of coast was the Pilgrims' intended destination when they set out in 1620?
the Hudson River
The mouth of the Hudson River lay at the northern edge of the Virginia Company's territory; the Dutch founded New Netherland there instead.
Q 06What was the name of the leaky companion ship that twice forced the Mayflower back to port in 1620?
Speedwell
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.
Q 07Under what name had the Pilgrims' 60-ton companion ship fought against the Spanish Armada in 1588?
Swiftsure
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.
Q 08How many passengers did the Mayflower carry across the Atlantic in 1620?
102
The Mayflower carried 102 passengers plus roughly 30 crew, all packed into a cargo ship about 100 feet long.
Q 09Once the Mayflower finally left England alone on 6 September 1620, how many days did the crossing take?
66
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.
Q 10Who was the master (captain) of the Mayflower on its 1620 voyage?
Christopher Jones
Christopher Jones, part-owner as well as master of the Mayflower, brought her home in May 1621 and died in March 1622.
Q 11What did Mayflower passengers use to force a storm-cracked main beam back into place mid-ocean?
a great iron screw
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.
Q 12Which passenger was washed overboard in a storm and hauled back aboard after grabbing a trailing rope?
John Howland
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.
Q 13Which Mayflower passenger served as Plymouth Colony's physician and a deacon of its church?
Samuel Fuller
Q 21What was the first name of the first English baby born in New England, in 1620?
Peregrine
Peregrine White was born aboard the Mayflower while it lay at anchor off Cape Cod in late November 1620, and he lived until 1704.
Q 22Roughly what share of the Mayflower's passengers died during the first winter of 1620-21?
about half
About half the passengers died that winter; only around 52 were alive to see spring, and roughly half the crew died too.
Q 23Those who died in the first winter were buried on which rise opposite Plymouth Rock?
Cole's Hill
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.
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.
Q 14Who was the only passenger to die during the actual Atlantic crossing?
William Butten
William Butten, a young servant of the colony's physician, died on 6 November 1620, shortly before Cape Cod was sighted on the 9th.
Q 15Which Mayflower passenger had been shipwrecked in Bermuda in 1609 en route to Jamestown?
Stephen Hopkins
Stephen Hopkins survived the 1609 wreck of the Sea Venture on Bermuda, an episode often cited as an inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Q 16The Mayflower first dropped anchor on 11 November 1620 in which Cape Cod harbour?
Provincetown Harbor
The Mayflower anchored in Provincetown Harbor on 11 November 1620 and stayed about five weeks while parties explored the Cape before settling on Plymouth.
Q 17How many men signed the Mayflower Compact aboard ship in November 1620?
41
41 men signed; the list of names comes from Nathaniel Morton's 1669 New England's Memorial, since the original document does not survive.
Q 18What did the Separatists call the non-Puritan passengers recruited by the Mayflower's investors?
Strangers
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.
Q 19Who was the first signer of the Mayflower Compact and the colony's first governor?
John Carver
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.
Q 20In what year was the 1620 shipboard agreement first given the name 'Mayflower Compact'?
1793
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.
Q 24Which Pilgrim elder sailed with his wife and two sons named Love and Wrestling?
William Brewster
William Brewster, the congregation's ruling elder, led worship at Plymouth until the first ordained pastor, Ralph Smith, arrived in 1629.
Q 25Which 1619 book from the Pilgrims' secret Dutch press made King James order a manhunt for the printer?
Perth Assembly
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.
Q 26Which Abenaki man startled the colonists on 16 March 1621 by greeting them in English?
Samoset
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.
Q 27Squanto was kidnapped by an English captain in 1614 and sold in which Spanish city?
Málaga
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.
Q 28What did Squanto tell the colonists to bury with their corn seed as fertiliser?
dead fish
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.
Q 29'Massasoit', the colonists' name for the Wampanoag leader, was a title meaning what?
Great Sachem
Massasoit means Great Sachem; the leader's own name was Ousamequin, but the English took the title for his name and it has stuck.
Q 30Which Pilgrim leader nursed Massasoit back to health in 1623?
Edward Winslow
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.