![]() More settlers arrived in the 1620s, and in 1623 Bradford married Alice Southworth, a newly arrived young widow with two sons who had been a member of the Separatist congregation in Leiden. Under Bradford’s leadership, the colony survived its early years, thanks to largely friendly relations with the local Wampanoag people, led by Massasoit. Bradford’s Leadership and Writing of Pilgrim History He was reelected more than 30 times, and except for a five-year interval would serve as governor of Plymouth Colony until his death more than 35 years later. ![]() Bradford, who fell ill but survived, was elected to succeed Carver in April 1621. Half of the company died that first harsh winter, including John Carver, the colony’s first governor. They began building the colony’s first houses, but many of them were soon struck by an illness that had begun spreading aboard the ship. The Mayflower sailed south from Provincetown and arrived at their settlement site in Plymouth Bay on December 20. When Bradford returned to the Mayflower, he learned that his wife had fallen from the ship’s deck and drowned in the frigid waters. The group chose a spot on the southern shore of Massachusetts that had been home to a now-deserted Native American village called Patuxet. Forming of Plymouth ColonyĮarly that December, Bradford joined an expedition to explore the region and find the best place to settle. Shortly before the ship dropped anchor, Bradford became one of 41 of the ship’s male passengers to sign the Mayflower Compact, the first governing document of their new colony. The Mayflower departed from Plymouth, England on September 6, 1620, and took 66 days to cross the Atlantic before sighting land on November 9.ĭespite attempts to sail further south to their planned destination in Virginia Colony, strong weather drove them back to what is now Provincetown Harbor, off Cape Cod. ![]() In England, the group was forced to leave behind the Speedwell, which had developed leaks, and cram aboard the Mayflower, the other commercial vessel chartered for the voyage. Eventually, the group numbered 102 people, including 35 children. In need of money, Bradford’s Separatist group (who called themselves “Saints”) had been forced to join with so-called “Strangers,” people outside the church who were seeking economic opportunities in the New World. In July 1620, William and Dorothy Bradford left their three-year-old son behind with her parents and sailed for England aboard the Speedwell. After sending emissaries back to England, the group received permission to form a settlement in the northern parts of the Virginia Colony, which at the time extended all the way to the Hudson River. Bradford owned a workshop in the cloth trade, and in 1613 married Dorothy May, the daughter of a prosperous English family living in Amsterdam.īy 1619, many of the Scrooby exiles had embraced the idea of emigrating to America, where they could form their own colony and raise their children according to English customs, rather than Dutch. Bradford and his fellow exiles lived there for more than a decade under the leadership of Brewster and Robinson. Under threat of prosecution from King James I, the group fled to the Netherlands in 1608, living in Amsterdam briefly before settling in the smaller city of Leiden in 1609. The Separatists sought to recreate what they saw as the simpler, more pious life of the earliest Christians by freeing themselves from the rituals and hierarchies of the Church of England.ĭid you know? William Bradford's descendants include Noah Webster, Julia Child and Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. As a teenager, Bradford was drawn to a growing Puritan sect known as the Separatists, and a congregation led by William Brewster and John Robinson in the nearby village of Scrooby. A long illness left him too weak to do much farm work, and instead, he focused on reading the Bible and other religious texts. Orphaned at a young age, he was raised by relatives. Bradford was born in 1590 in Austerfield, a farming community in Yorkshire, England.
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