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• Te presentamos un nuevo curso de Ingles totalmente a distancia en nuestra plataforma de e-learning
• Ingles para Seguridad Publica, Industrial, Ambiental e Higiene.
• Comienza el 06 de diciembre 2008
• Requisitos: buen nivel de ingles.  Consultar por test de nivelacion.
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SECURITY AND PUBLIC HEALTH

Jamestown and the Virginia Experiment

The Virtual Jamestown Archive is a digital research, teaching and learning project that explores the legacies of the Jamestown settlement and “the Virginia experiment.” As a work in progress, Virtual Jamestown aims to shape the national dialogue on the occasion of the four hundred-year anniversary observance in 2007 of the founding of the Jamestown colony.

http://www.virtualjamestown.org

Jamestown: list of first settlers

External links for Pilgrim fathers

Pilgrim Fathers

Pilgrims, or Pilgrim Fathers (or Pilgrim Mothers), is a name commonly applied to the early settlers of the Plymouth Colony in present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts. Their leadership came from a religious congregation who had fled a volatile political environment in the East Midlands of England for the relative calm of the Netherlands to preserve their religion. Concerned with losing their cultural identity, the group later arranged with English investors to establish a new colony in North America. The colonists faced a lengthy series of challenges, from bureaucracy, impatient investors and internal conflicts to sabotage, storms, disease, and uncertain relations with the indigenous people. The colony, established in 1620, became the second successful English settlement in what was to become the United States of America, the first being Jamestown, Virginia, which was founded in 1607. Their story has become a central theme of the history and culture of the United States.

Voyage

Model of a typical merchantman of the period, showing the cramped conditions that had to be endured.

The Pilgrims on the Speedwell

In July 1620, Speedwell departed Delfshaven with the Leiden colonists. Reaching Southampton, Hampshire, they met with Mayflower and the additional colonists hired by the investors. With final arrangements made, the two vessels set out on August 5 (Old Style)/August 15 (New Style).^[35]

Soon thereafter, the Speedwell crew reported that their ship was taking in water, so both were diverted to Dartmouth, Devon. There it was inspected for leaks and sealed, but a second attempt to depart also failed, bringing them only so far as Plymouth, Devon. It was decided that Speedwell was untrustworthy, and it was sold. It would later be learned that crew members had deliberately caused the ship to leak, allowing them to abandon their year-long commitments. The ship’s master and some of the crew transferred to Mayflower for the trip.

 Atlantic crossing

Of the 121 combined passengers, 102 were chosen to travel on Mayflower with the supplies consolidated. Of these, about half had come by way of Leiden, and about 28 of the adults were members of the congregation.^[36] The reduced party finally sailed successfully on September 6/September 16, 1620.

Initially the trip went smoothly, but under way they were met with strong winds and storms. One of these caused a main beam to crack, and although they were more than half the way to their destination, the possibility of turning back was considered. Using a “great iron screw” (probably a piece of house construction equipment)^[37] brought along by the colonists, they repaired the ship sufficiently to continue. One passenger, John Howland, was washed overboard in the storm but caught a rope and was rescued.

One crew member and one passenger died before they reached land. A child was born at sea and named “Oceanus”.^[38]

 Arrival in America

1620 place names mentioned by Bradford

Land was sighted on November 10/November 20, 1620. It was confirmed that the area was Cape Cod, within the New England territory recommended by Weston. An attempt was made to sail the ship around the cape towards the Hudson River, also within the New England grant area, but they encountered shoals and difficult currents around Malabar (a land mass that formerly existed in the vicinity of present-day Monomoy). It was decided to turn around, and by November 11/November 21 the ship was anchored in what is today known as Provincetown Harbor.^[39][40]

Mayflower Compact

With the charter for the Plymouth Council for New England incomplete by the time the colonists departed England (it would be granted while they were in transit, on November 3/November 13,^[30]) they arrived without a patent; the older Wincob patent was from their abandoned dealings with the London Company. Some of the passengers, aware of the situation, suggested that without a patent in place, they were free to do as they chose upon landing and ignore the contract with the investors.^[41][42]

To address this issue, a brief contract, later to be known as the Mayflower Compact, was drafted promising cooperation among the settlers “for the general good of the Colony unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.” It was ratified by majority rule, with 41 adult male passengers signing.^[43] At this time, John Carver was chosen as the colony’s first governor.

First landings

Thorough exploration of the area was delayed for over two weeks because the shallop or pinnace (a smaller sailing vessel) they brought had been partially dismantled to fit aboard the Mayflower and was further damaged in transit. Small parties, however, waded to the beach to fetch firewood and attend to long-deferred personal hygiene.

While awaiting the shallop, exploratory parties led by Myles Standish—a Manx soldier the colonists had met while in Leiden—and Christopher Jones were undertaken. They encountered several old buildings, both European-built and Native-built, and a few recently cultivated fields.

An artificial mound was found near the dunes, which they partially uncovered and found to be a Native grave. Further along, a similar mound, more recently made, was found, and as the colonists feared they might otherwise starve, they ventured to remove some of the provisions which had been placed in the grave. Baskets of maize were found inside, some of which the colonists took and placed into an iron kettle they also found nearby, while they reburied the rest, intending to use the borrowed corn as seed for planting.

William Bradford later recorded in his book, “Of Plymouth Plantation“, that after the shallop had been repaired,

“They also found two of the Indian’s houses covered with mats, and some of their implements in them; but the people had run away and could not be seen. They also found more corn, and beans of various colours. These they brought away, intending to give them full satisfaction (repayment) when they should meet with any of them, – as about six months afterwards they did.

“And it is to be noted as a special providence of God, and a great mercy to this poor people, that they thus got seed to plant corn the next year, or they might have starved; for they had none, nor any likelihood of getting any, till too late for the planting season.”

By December, most of the passengers and crew had become ill, coughing violently. Many were also suffering from the effects of scurvy. There had already been ice and snowfall, hampering exploration efforts. During the first winter, 47% of them died.

 Contact

Explorations resumed on December 6/December 16. The shallop party—seven colonists from Leiden, three from London, and seven crew—headed south along the cape and chose to land at the area inhabited by the Nauset people (roughly, present-day Brewster, Chatham, Eastham, Harwich and Orleans), where they saw some native people on the shore, who ran when the colonists approached. Inland they found more mounds; one containing acorns, which they exhumed and left; and more graves, which they decided not to dig.

Remaining ashore overnight, they heard cries near the encampment. The following morning, they were met by native people who proceeded to shoot at them with arrows. The colonists retrieved their firearms and shot back, then chased the native people into the woods but did not find them. There was no more contact with native people for several months.^[44]

The local people were already familiar with the English, who had intermittently visited the area for fishing and trade before Mayflower arrived. In the Cape Cod area, relations were poor following a visit several years earlier by Thomas Hunt. Hunt kidnapped twenty people from Patuxet (the place that would become New Plymouth) and another seven from Nausett, and he attempted to sell them as slaves in Europe. One of the Patuxet abductees was Squanto, who would become an ally of the Plymouth colony. The Pokanoket, who also lived nearby, had developed a particular dislike for the English after one group came in, captured numerous people, and shot them aboard their ship. There had by this time already been reciprocal killings at Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod.^[41][45]

Samuel de Champlain’s 1605 map of Plymouth Harbor, showing Wampanoag village Patuxet, with some modern place names added for reference. The star is the approximate location of the 1620 English settlement.

Settlement

Continuing westward, the shallop’s mast and rudder were broken by storms, and their sail was lost. Rowing for safety, they encountered the harbor formed by the current Duxbury and Plymouth barrier beaches and stumbled on land in the darkness. They remained at this spot—Clark’s Island—for two days to recuperate and repair equipment.

Resuming exploration on Monday, December 11/December 21, the party crossed over to the mainland and surveyed the area that ultimately became the settlement. The anniversary of this survey is observed in Massachusetts as Forefathers’ Day and is traditionally associated with the Plymouth Rock landing legend. This land was especially suited to winter building because the land had already been cleared, and the tall hills provided a good defensive position.

The cleared village, known as Patuxet to the Wampanoag people, was abandoned about three years earlier following a plague that killed all of its residents. Because the disease involved hemorrhaging,^[46] the “Indian fever” is assumed to have been fulminating smallpox introduced by European traders. The outbreak had been severe enough that the colonists discovered unburied skeletons in abandoned dwellings.^[47] With the local population in such a weakened state, the colonists faced no resistance to settling there.

The exploratory party returned to Mayflower, which was then brought to the harbor on December 16/December 26. Only nearby sites were evaluated, with a hill in Plymouth (so named on earlier charts)^[48] chosen on December 19/December 29.

Construction commenced immediately, with the first common house nearly completed by January 9/January 19. At this point, single men were ordered to join with families. Each extended family was assigned a plot and built its own dwelling. Supplies were brought ashore, and the settlement was mostly complete by early February.^[41][49]

Between the landing and March, only 47 colonists had survived the diseases they contracted on the ship. During the worst of the sickness, only six or seven of the group were able and willing to feed and care for the rest. In this time, half the Mayflower crew also died.^[50]
William Bradford became governor in 1621 upon the death of John Carver, served for eleven consecutive years, and was elected to various other terms until his death in 1657. The patent of Plymouth Colony was surrendered by Bradford to the freemen in 1640, minus a small reserve of three tracts of land. On March 22, 1621, the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony signed a peace treaty with Massasoit of the Wampanoags.

The colony contained roughly what is now Bristol County, Plymouth County, and Barnstable County, Massachusetts.

When the Massachusetts Bay Colony was reorganized and issued a new charter as the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1691, Plymouth ended its history as a separate colony.

 History of the name Pilgrims

In Bradford’s history

The first use of the word pilgrims for the Mayflower passengers appeared in William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation. As he finished recounting his group’s July 1620 departure from Leiden, Bradford used the imagery of Hebrews 11:13–16, about Old Testament “strangers and pilgrims” who had opportunity to return to their old country but instead longed for a better, heavenly country. Bradford wrote:

So they lefte [that] goodly & pleasante citie, which had been ther resting place, nere 12 years; but they knew they were pilgrimes, & looked not much on these things; but lift up their eyes to y^e heavens, their dearest cuntrie, and quieted their spirits.^[51]

 In retellings of Bradford’s history

For over a century and a half after Bradford wrote this passage, there is no record of Pilgrims being used to describe Plymouth’s founders, except when quoting Bradford. When the Mayflower’s story was retold by historians Nathaniel Morton (in 1669) and Cotton Mather (in 1702), both paraphrased Bradford’s passage, and used Bradford’s word pilgrims. At Plymouth’s Forefathers’ Day observance in 1793, Rev. Chandler Robbins recited this passage from Bradford.^[52]