Plymouth, Massachusetts
Harbour on the west side of Cape Cod Bay where the English Separatists from Leiden settled in December 1620. According to William Bradford, hardly any of the native people of the place were then left alive.
William Bradford tells how an exploring party sounded the harbour in December 1620, found cornfields and running brooks, and judged the place fit to settle; the ship arrived on 16 December by the old calendar, and the first common house was begun on the 25th (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ch. 10 (pp. 106–107)). He says that Squanto was a native of the place and that scarcely any of its people besides him were left alive (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, book 2, 1620–1621 (p. 116)). See the Pilgrims Land at Plymouth.
What happened here
- 1620, firm dateThe Pilgrims Land at Plymouth
Part of an English Separatist congregation that had lived in exile at Leiden sails to New England in 1620, forms itself into a civil body by a written covenant, and founds Plymouth. Half die in the first winter; a peace is made with the sachem Massasoit.