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 in secret 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?

Leiden gave the Separatists work in its cloth trades, but after 11 or 12 years they left, fearing that their children were growing up Dutch and that war with Spain was about to resume.

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

John Robinson stayed because most of his flock did: only those ready to go sailed in 1620, the larger part of the congregation remained in Holland, and their pastor remained with them.

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

The Merchant Adventurers drove a hard bargain: the colonists were to ship home fish, timber and furs, and for seven years even their houses and land belonged to the joint venture.

Near the mouth of which river did the Pilgrims plan to settle when they sailed in 1620?

The Hudson River's mouth then marked the northern edge of Virginia; dangerous shoals and contrary winds off Cape Cod turned the Mayflower back, and the Pilgrims stayed in New England.

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.

Which cargo did the Mayflower mainly bring home from the Continent in the years before the Pilgrims hired her?

Wine was her trade: she took English cloth out to Bordeaux and brought wine home, so the Pilgrims crossed the ocean packed into a merchant ship built for casks and bales.

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

102 passengers crowded a cargo ship about 100 feet long, because the leaking companion vessel was sent back and those of its travellers who still wished to go were packed in with the rest.

About how long did the Mayflower take to cross the Atlantic in the autumn of 1620?

Two months: 66 days from Plymouth to Cape Cod, much of it through autumn storms. The voyage home the next spring took only about a month.

Who was the master, or captain, of the Mayflower on the 1620 voyage to America?

Christopher Jones meant to sail home as soon as the settlers had chosen a site, but so many of his crew fell sick or died that he wintered at Plymouth and left only in April 1621.

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 raised the cracked beam back into place; the company, which had been debating whether to turn back, then resolved to sail on.

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

John Howland caught a trailing halyard, held on though dragged deep under, and was hauled in with a boat hook; the family he went on to found counts both Presidents Bush among its descendants.

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

Samuel Fuller was lent to the new settlement at Salem in 1629 to treat its sick; four years later the colony's own doctor died in a fever that swept Plymouth.

What name was given to the baby boy born aboard the Mayflower during the crossing?

Oceanus was born at sea, and his birth offset the one death among the passengers, though he did not live past early childhood.

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

Stephen Hopkins was sentenced to death for mutiny while marooned on Bermuda, pleaded his way to a pardon, and a decade later crossed the Atlantic again on the Mayflower.

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

Provincetown Harbor sheltered the Mayflower for about five weeks and saw the Compact signed aboard, which is why the tall Pilgrim Monument stands in Provincetown rather than Plymouth.

What did the Mayflower Compact's 41 signers pledge to obey?

Their own laws: the signers formed a 'civil body politic' and promised 'all due submission and obedience' to the laws it would make, while still calling themselves loyal subjects of King James.

What did the Separatists call the fellow passengers who had been recruited by the Mayflower's investors?

The Separatists called them Strangers; some talked of going their own way once ashore, since the patent had no force this far north, 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.

What chore sent the Mayflower's women ashore on their first Monday at Cape Cod, 'as they had great need'?

Washing clothes: after the long weeks at sea, the women went ashore to wash on Monday 13 November, two days after the Mayflower anchored.

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

Peregrine comes from the Latin peregrinus, a wanderer or foreigner, the same root that gives English 'pilgrim'; he was born aboard the Mayflower at anchor off Cape Cod.

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

About half the passengers died that winter, and about half the crew as well; at the worst, Bradford wrote, only six or seven people were well enough to nurse all the rest.

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

Cole's Hill, just above the harbour, took the first winter's dead; the town's better-known Burial Hill, further up the slope, only came into use as a graveyard later.

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.

What did a Pilgrim leader secretly run in Holland that sent King James's agents hunting for him in 1619?

A printing press in his house turned out banned religious books for readers in Britain; after a 1619 tract attacking the king's church policy in Scotland, he hid for a year until the Mayflower sailed.

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

Samoset, an Abenaki sagamore from the Maine coast, had picked up his English from the fishing crews who worked there each season, and knew most of their captains by name.

Who is said to have saved Squanto from slavery in Spain in 1614?

Friars took the captives from their kidnapper to teach them Christianity, an early English account says; Squanto later reached England and got home 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?

Great Sachem was his rank, not his name: Ousamequin, as his own people knew him, made a treaty with Plymouth in 1621 and kept it for the rest of his life, some forty years.

Which Pilgrim leader nursed Massasoit back to health in 1623?

Edward Winslow tended the gravely ill Massasoit in March 1623, feeding him broth until he rallied; the grateful leader then revealed a plot against the colony.

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

Alexander and Philip were the names the Plymouth court gave the two brothers; the younger went down in history as King Philip, leader of the 1675 war that bears his name.

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

Patuxet was Squanto's home; kidnapped in 1614, he made his way back five years later only to find the village empty.

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 famous explorer did the Pilgrims approach as a guide before hiring Myles Standish as their military adviser?

John Smith was interested, but the Pilgrims found his price too high and feared so famous and forceful a man would end up running the colony himself.

What did Myles Standish carry home from the 1623 Wessagusset killings?

A severed head, that of the warrior Wituwamat, was set on a pole at Plymouth as a warning; the Pilgrims' own pastor wrote from Holland wishing they had converted some before killing any.

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

John Alden was free to go home when the voyage ended but chose to stay, marrying fellow passenger Priscilla Mullins and raising ten children.

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, himself descended from Priscilla, built the poem on an old family tradition, not on any record; it sold tens of thousands of copies within a year.

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 had arrived in 1621 as a boy and stayed on when his father sailed home within weeks; they raised eight children at Plymouth.

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

France: French raiders seized the Fortune and stripped her of her cargo. She had also arrived with 35 new settlers and no provisions, forcing the colony onto half rations.

Which recreation does a colonist's 1621 letter name at the Pilgrims' harvest celebration?

Musket drill: the letter says 'amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms', and adds that Massasoit came with some ninety men, nearly twice the colony's survivors.

How long did the Pilgrims entertain Massasoit's men at the 1621 harvest celebration?

Three days of feasting were laid on for Massasoit's party; the colony's first recorded day of thanksgiving came only in 1623.

The Pilgrims' first recorded day of thanksgiving, in 1623, gave thanks for the end of what?

A drought had withered the corn for weeks; the colonists set aside a day of solemn prayer, and that evening it began to rain with what Bradford called 'sweet and gentle showers'.

Which feature of the classic Pilgrim costume was dreamed up in the 19th century and never worn at Plymouth?

Buckles were added to the hats and shoes by 19th-century artists; the tall, flat-topped hat itself was real, but the Pilgrims wore it plain.

How do historians know the Pilgrims wore violet, red, green and blue, not just black?

Estate inventories, drawn up for probate when a colonist died, often noted each garment's colour, and violet, red, green and blue all appear in them.

What was about to be built over Plymouth Rock in 1741 when Thomas Faunce identified it?

A wharf was planned, so Faunce had himself carried to the shore to bid the rock farewell, saying his father, an early settler, had pointed it out; the wharf went up anyway, with the rock left showing.

What happened to Plymouth Rock in 1774 when townspeople tried to move it?

It split in two, and only the upper piece reached the town square; the two parts were not reunited on the shore until 1880.

Bradford's lost manuscript history resurfaced in the 1850s in the library of which palace, home of the Bishop of London?

Fulham Palace kept the manuscript until 1897, when a London church court ordered it handed to the American ambassador after years of requests, and it crossed the Atlantic for the last time.

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

Hebrews 11 pictures believers as pilgrims on the earth; Bradford borrowed the image once, in passing, and nearly two centuries went by before 'Pilgrims' became the settlers' usual name.

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

Massachusetts Bay, the Puritan colony founded later to the north, soon outgrew its older neighbour, and the 1691 charter merged the two into one province under the bigger colony's name.

Legend says the Mayflower's timbers became what in an English village?

A barn at Jordans in Buckinghamshire has long been claimed to be built from her timbers, but there is no proof: the ship's last sure record is a 1624 valuation.

Mayflower II, the 1957 replica, was built in which English county, home of the Pilgrims' final departure port?

Devon: she was built at Brixham for England's Project Mayflower, to mark the wartime alliance with America, and sailed in 1957 from Plymouth, Devon, to its American namesake.

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

Plantation went in 2020, the Mayflower's 400th-anniversary year; to the Pilgrims the word simply meant a new colony, which is how Bradford used it in the title of his history.

Which name did the Pilgrims give the spot on Cape Cod where Native warriors attacked their scouting party one December morning?

First Encounter is what the scouts called the place after trading gunfire for arrows with thirty or forty men in the half-dark; none of the English was hit, and First Encounter Beach keeps the name.

By what name, taken from an early leader, were English Separatists like the Pilgrims known to their critics?

Brownists took their name from Robert Browne, who preached separate congregations in the 1580s and then returned to the Church of England; Shakespeare made the word a joke in Twelfth Night.

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

A shallop this size had to be cut down to stow between decks, and passengers sleeping in it strained its seams, so the carpenter needed 16 or 17 days to make it seaworthy.

Before settling on Virginia, the future Pilgrims 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.

What did Governor Bradford do in 1623 that 'made all hands very industrious' at planting time?

Gave each family its own plot: until then the fields were worked in common, and Bradford wrote that afterwards even the women went willingly out to set corn with their children.

Which London ironmonger talked the Pilgrims out of a Dutch offer in 1620 by promising his own backers' money?

Thomas Weston promised that he and his merchant friends would find the ships and money; two years later he planted a colony of his own nearby, which collapsed within a year.

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.