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The Mayflower Papers: Selected Writings of Colonial New England
The most important personal accounts of the Plymouth Colony, the key sources of Nathaniel Philbrick's New York Times bestseller Mayflower
National Book Award winner Nathaniel Philbrick and his father, Thomas Philbrick, present the most significant and readable original works that were used in the writing of Mayflower, offering a definitive look at a crucial era of America?s history. The selections include William Bradford?s ?Of Plymouth Plantation? (1651), the most comprehensive of all contemporary accounts of settlement in seventeenth-century America; Benjamin Church?s ?Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip?s War 1716,? an eye-opening account from Church?s field notes from battle; and much more. Providing explanatory notes for every piece, the editors have vividly re- created the world of seventeenth-century New England for anyone interested in the early history of our nation.
National Book Award winner Nathaniel Philbrick and his father, Thomas Philbrick, present the most significant and readable original works that were used in the writing of Mayflower, offering a definitive look at a crucial era of America?s history. The selections include William Bradford?s ?Of Plymouth Plantation? (1651), the most comprehensive of all contemporary accounts of settlement in seventeenth-century America; Benjamin Church?s ?Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip?s War 1716,? an eye-opening account from Church?s field notes from battle; and much more. Providing explanatory notes for every piece, the editors have vividly re- created the world of seventeenth-century New England for anyone interested in the early history of our nation.
338 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 24, 2007
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About the author
Nathaniel Philbrick
47 books3,558 followersPhilbrick was Brown’s first Intercollegiate All-American sailor in 1978; that year he won the Sunfish North Americans in Barrington, RI; today he and his wife Melissa sail their Beetle Cat Clio and their Tiffany Jane 34 Marie-J in the waters surrounding Nantucket Island.
After grad school, Philbrick worked for four years at Sailing World magazine; was a freelancer for a number of years, during which time he wrote/edited several sailing books, including Yaahting: A Parody (1984), for which he was the editor-in-chief; during this time he was also the primary caregiver for his two children. After moving to Nantucket in 1986, he became interested in the history of the island and wrote Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People. He was offered the opportunity to start the Egan Maritime Institute in 1995, and in 2000 he published In the Heart of the Sea, followed by Sea of Glory, in 2003, and Mayflower. He is presently at work on a book about the Battle of Little Big Horn.
Mayflower was a finalist for both the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in History and the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was winner of the Massachusetts Book Award for nonfiction. In the Heart of the Sea won the National Book Award for nonfiction; Revenge of the Whale won a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award; Sea of Glory won the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize and the Albion-Monroe Award from the National Maritime Historical Society. Philbrick has also received the Byrne Waterman Award from the Kendall Whaling Museum, the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for distinguished service from the USS Constitution Museum, the Nathaniel Bowditch Award from the American Merchant Marine Museum, the William Bradford Award from the Pilgrim Society, the Boston History Award from the Bostonian Society, and the New England Book Award from the New England Independent Booksellers Association.
from his website
After grad school, Philbrick worked for four years at Sailing World magazine; was a freelancer for a number of years, during which time he wrote/edited several sailing books, including Yaahting: A Parody (1984), for which he was the editor-in-chief; during this time he was also the primary caregiver for his two children. After moving to Nantucket in 1986, he became interested in the history of the island and wrote Away Off Shore: Nantucket Island and Its People. He was offered the opportunity to start the Egan Maritime Institute in 1995, and in 2000 he published In the Heart of the Sea, followed by Sea of Glory, in 2003, and Mayflower. He is presently at work on a book about the Battle of Little Big Horn.
Mayflower was a finalist for both the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in History and the Los Angeles Times Book Award and was winner of the Massachusetts Book Award for nonfiction. In the Heart of the Sea won the National Book Award for nonfiction; Revenge of the Whale won a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award; Sea of Glory won the Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize and the Albion-Monroe Award from the National Maritime Historical Society. Philbrick has also received the Byrne Waterman Award from the Kendall Whaling Museum, the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for distinguished service from the USS Constitution Museum, the Nathaniel Bowditch Award from the American Merchant Marine Museum, the William Bradford Award from the Pilgrim Society, the Boston History Award from the Bostonian Society, and the New England Book Award from the New England Independent Booksellers Association.
from his website
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November 30, 2025
The Mayflower, in 1620, was a ship - a Dutch-built cargo fluyt that carried 156 Pilgrims from England to the coast of what is now Massachusetts. And 386 years later, in 2006, Mayflower was a book – a very important book. Nathaniel Philbrick’s Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War achieved something new in colonial-American studies by linking the heavily mythologized voyage of the Pilgrims with the difficult later history of 17th-century New England.
As Philbrick recounts in Mayflower, the dreams of a brighter future that were embodied in the popular image of the first Thanksgiving became lost in the squalid realities of intercolonial squabbling, followed by a singularly bitter conflict between colonists and Indigenous Americans (King Philip’s War of 1676). And the reader of Philbrick’s Mayflower who wants to dig deeper into this fascinating and complex period of history would do well to seek out The Mayflower Papers – a collection of primary-source documents specific to the period, compiled jointly by Nathaniel Philbrick and his father Thomas Philbrick.
Both authors bring formidable credentials to the proverbial table. Nathaniel Philbrick had won a National Book Award for his earlier book In the Heart of the Sea (2000), and his Mayflower was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in History. Thomas Philbrick, meanwhile, is an emeritus professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. And both men bring their considerable experience to bear in order to show how these Selected Writings of Colonial New England constitute, by themselves, a helpful history of the region’s first century.
The works from which the Philbricks draw excerpts for The Mayflower Papers are as follows:
• William Bradford and Edward Winslow, Mourt’s Relation (1622);
• Edward Winslow, Good News from New England (1625);
• Thomas Morton, New English Canaan (1632);
• William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (1647);
• Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (1682); and
• Benjamin Church and Thomas Church, Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s War (1716).
Modern American readers reviewing the excerpts of Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation that are included in The Mayflower Papers may be particularly interested in Bradford’s account of the signing of the Mayflower Compact, while the colonists were still en route from England to their North American destination. This document, in which 41 of the colonists committed themselves to form a civil body politic, and live under its rules, has often been seen as an early example of Americans’ commitment to government that draws its power from the consent of the governed, as the Mayflower colonists jointly declared in the compact that
We whose names are underwritten…do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.
It all sounds very inspiring, and U.S. readers in particular may think ahead to when different groups of signers, in Philadelphia, affixed their signatures to the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, in 1776 and 1787 respectively. But the Philbricks helpfully include the prior paragraph, in which Bradford makes clear that any “consent of the governed” in the Mayflower Compact really amounts to one particular form of “consent of the governed” – to wit, consenting to be governed in terms that Bradford and other deeply religious Separatists would find acceptable. Breaking away, chronologically speaking, from when the Pilgrims landed at Cape Cod in late December of 1620, Bradford writes that
I shall a little return back and begin with a combination made by them before they came ashore, being the first foundation of their government in this place; occasioned partly by the discontented and mutinous speeches that some of the strangers amongst them had let fall from them in the ship – that when they came ashore, they would use their own liberty; for none had power to command them, the patent they had being for Virginia and not for New England, which belonged to another Government, with which the Virginia Company had nothing to do.
On the one hand, it sounds almost Madisonian: people have bad tendencies, and government exists in part to keep people from indulging those bad tendencies against and upon one another. On the other hand, however, it seems clear that Bradford is concerned about whether the Pilgrims will be able to keep “the strangers amongst them” living in harmony with Pilgrim ways. The passage, like many in Of Plymouth Plantation, reveals much regarding Bradford’s contradictions: courageous in his personal conduct, skilled as a leader, and undeniably deep and sincere in his faith, he was as determined to keep the people of his colony living by his Separatist principles as King James the First ever was to make all English men and women conform with his Church of England. Just as Philbrick keeps reminding the reader throughout Mayflower, it's complicated.
Mourt’s Relation, written mainly by the non-Separatist colonist Edward Winslow, is an example of the sort of document that flowed out of the colonies quite frequently in those days – a work that was meant to extol the benefits of English colonization of North America, and to encourage enterprising English people to join in the colonial venture. Today, however, it is best remembered for Winslow’s description of the first Thanksgiving.
We all know, of course, that the Pilgrims had the misfortune to arrive in North America at the beginning of a harsh New England winter; 45 out of 102 Mayflower passengers died in that winter of 1620-21. The survivors, understandably, had much to feel thankful for. And Winslow describes the first Thanksgiving celebration thus:
Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might, after a more special manner, rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help besides, served the Company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us.
And, amongst the rest, their greatest King Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted. And they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the Plantation….
Strange to think that this brief description by Edward Winslow continues to influence the celebration of one of the major holidays of a nation that would not exist for more than 150 years after the publication of Mourt’s Relation. It is a book that most Americans have probably never heard of. And yet, more than 400 years after its publication, Mourt’s Relation is still a founding text for American Thanksgiving celebrations every November.
Edward Winslow, the co-author of Mourt’s Relation, also wrote Good News from New England (1625). Like Mourt’s Relation, this latter book is the kind of work that poured out of North America’s English colonies in the early 17th century, encouraging prospective emigrants in England to board ship and journey to the colonies. Readers in England who turned to Winslow’s Good News from New England might have been forgiven for coming away from the book with a certain degree of confusion.
On the one hand, there is the inspiring account of how, in 1623, Winslow used the latest English medical treatments of his kind to treat the Wampanoag king Massasoit, who was afflicted with a life-threatening condition of the mouth and throat; the grateful king, according to Winslow, declared, “Now I see the English are my friends and love me; and whilst I live, I will never forget this kindness they have shown me.” On the other hand, there is the appalling violence that Pilgrims, led by Miles Standish, perpetrated against a group of Indigenous people who were suspected – not proven, mind you, but suspected – of planning violence against the Pilgrims. These passages of bad news from Good News from New England look ahead to the even more appalling violence and brutality of King Philip’s War, 50 years later.
Readers who want to get an outsider’s view of the Pilgrims should turn to Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan (1625). Morton, a Renaissance man with a classical education and a pleasure-loving, worldly outlook, could not have been more different from Separatists like Bradford and Standish; it was as if William Shakespeare or Christopher Marlowe had been sent forward in time to the English Puritan commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell. Morton founded his own Massachusetts settlement, called it “Ma-re Mount,” and offended the nearby Pilgrims in all sorts of ways. He traded firearms and liquor with the people of the local Indigenous nations, and he indulged in secular English traditions like erecting a Maypole on May Day (May 1st) for a day of feasting and dancing. When the Pilgrims had had enough of Morton’s “misrule” of his settlement, they arrested him, cut down the maypole, and shut down “Ma-re Mount.”
Morton describes, with a mixture of humour and bitterness, how a group of Pilgrims led by Miles Standish (whose short statute Morton mocks by calling him “Captain Shrimp”) treacherously negotiated Morton’s surrender, promising “that no violence should be offered to [Morton’s] person”, but then laid violent hands on Morton and “practiced to be rid of [him] upon any terms, as willingly as if he had been the very Hydra of the time.” The classical allusions to mythical monsters like the many-headed Hydra or the giant Briareus are characteristic of Morton; and fans of Nathaniel Hawthorne know that the saga of Morton’s ill-fated attempt to defy the Pilgrims inspired Hawthorne’s short story “The Maypole of Merry Mount” (1837).
The Mayflower Papers then moves ahead to King Philip’s War of 1675-76. It was a hideous conflict that, as Nathaniel Philbrick points out in his earlier Mayflower book, wrecked the economies of the New England colonies and virtually annihilated the Indigenous nations of the region. This grim period of New England’s colonial history is represented by two works.
The first, Mary Rowlandson’s The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (1682), tells the story of how Rowlandson, who survived a Native raid on her frontier community, was kidnapped and taken up into the New England back country. As they removed from one remote location to another, Rowlandson’s captors treated her sometimes with cruelty, sometimes with surprising kindness. Rowlandson looked to her religious faith to sustain her through the ordeal, and used her knitting skills to secure better food and better treatment during her time as a hostage. She even met King Philip himself, and asked him what he would require for her release. “He said two Coats and twenty shillings in Money, and a bushel of seed Corn, and some Tobacco. I thanked him for his love, but I knew the good news as well as the crafty Fox.”
Benjamin Church, who led the English forces in King Philip’s War, set down his memoirs of the conflict; and 40 years later, in 1716, his son Thomas Church published Benjamin Church’s account, under the frankly bizarre title of Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s War. While Church focuses upon what he calls the “inhumane Murders and Barbarities” of King Philip’s forces, the reader sees that there was plenty of inhumane murder and barbarity being perpetrated on both sides.
The Mayflower Papers may work best for students of history who have already read Philbrick’s Mayflower and want to review the primary-source documents that helped inspire Philbrick’s crafting of his best-selling work of history. Like its predecessor, The Mayflower Papers provides a salutary demythologizing of a heavily mythologized period of American history.
As Philbrick recounts in Mayflower, the dreams of a brighter future that were embodied in the popular image of the first Thanksgiving became lost in the squalid realities of intercolonial squabbling, followed by a singularly bitter conflict between colonists and Indigenous Americans (King Philip’s War of 1676). And the reader of Philbrick’s Mayflower who wants to dig deeper into this fascinating and complex period of history would do well to seek out The Mayflower Papers – a collection of primary-source documents specific to the period, compiled jointly by Nathaniel Philbrick and his father Thomas Philbrick.
Both authors bring formidable credentials to the proverbial table. Nathaniel Philbrick had won a National Book Award for his earlier book In the Heart of the Sea (2000), and his Mayflower was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in History. Thomas Philbrick, meanwhile, is an emeritus professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. And both men bring their considerable experience to bear in order to show how these Selected Writings of Colonial New England constitute, by themselves, a helpful history of the region’s first century.
The works from which the Philbricks draw excerpts for The Mayflower Papers are as follows:
• William Bradford and Edward Winslow, Mourt’s Relation (1622);
• Edward Winslow, Good News from New England (1625);
• Thomas Morton, New English Canaan (1632);
• William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (1647);
• Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (1682); and
• Benjamin Church and Thomas Church, Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s War (1716).
Modern American readers reviewing the excerpts of Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation that are included in The Mayflower Papers may be particularly interested in Bradford’s account of the signing of the Mayflower Compact, while the colonists were still en route from England to their North American destination. This document, in which 41 of the colonists committed themselves to form a civil body politic, and live under its rules, has often been seen as an early example of Americans’ commitment to government that draws its power from the consent of the governed, as the Mayflower colonists jointly declared in the compact that
We whose names are underwritten…do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.
It all sounds very inspiring, and U.S. readers in particular may think ahead to when different groups of signers, in Philadelphia, affixed their signatures to the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, in 1776 and 1787 respectively. But the Philbricks helpfully include the prior paragraph, in which Bradford makes clear that any “consent of the governed” in the Mayflower Compact really amounts to one particular form of “consent of the governed” – to wit, consenting to be governed in terms that Bradford and other deeply religious Separatists would find acceptable. Breaking away, chronologically speaking, from when the Pilgrims landed at Cape Cod in late December of 1620, Bradford writes that
I shall a little return back and begin with a combination made by them before they came ashore, being the first foundation of their government in this place; occasioned partly by the discontented and mutinous speeches that some of the strangers amongst them had let fall from them in the ship – that when they came ashore, they would use their own liberty; for none had power to command them, the patent they had being for Virginia and not for New England, which belonged to another Government, with which the Virginia Company had nothing to do.
On the one hand, it sounds almost Madisonian: people have bad tendencies, and government exists in part to keep people from indulging those bad tendencies against and upon one another. On the other hand, however, it seems clear that Bradford is concerned about whether the Pilgrims will be able to keep “the strangers amongst them” living in harmony with Pilgrim ways. The passage, like many in Of Plymouth Plantation, reveals much regarding Bradford’s contradictions: courageous in his personal conduct, skilled as a leader, and undeniably deep and sincere in his faith, he was as determined to keep the people of his colony living by his Separatist principles as King James the First ever was to make all English men and women conform with his Church of England. Just as Philbrick keeps reminding the reader throughout Mayflower, it's complicated.
Mourt’s Relation, written mainly by the non-Separatist colonist Edward Winslow, is an example of the sort of document that flowed out of the colonies quite frequently in those days – a work that was meant to extol the benefits of English colonization of North America, and to encourage enterprising English people to join in the colonial venture. Today, however, it is best remembered for Winslow’s description of the first Thanksgiving.
We all know, of course, that the Pilgrims had the misfortune to arrive in North America at the beginning of a harsh New England winter; 45 out of 102 Mayflower passengers died in that winter of 1620-21. The survivors, understandably, had much to feel thankful for. And Winslow describes the first Thanksgiving celebration thus:
Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might, after a more special manner, rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help besides, served the Company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our Arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us.
And, amongst the rest, their greatest King Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted. And they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the Plantation….
Strange to think that this brief description by Edward Winslow continues to influence the celebration of one of the major holidays of a nation that would not exist for more than 150 years after the publication of Mourt’s Relation. It is a book that most Americans have probably never heard of. And yet, more than 400 years after its publication, Mourt’s Relation is still a founding text for American Thanksgiving celebrations every November.
Edward Winslow, the co-author of Mourt’s Relation, also wrote Good News from New England (1625). Like Mourt’s Relation, this latter book is the kind of work that poured out of North America’s English colonies in the early 17th century, encouraging prospective emigrants in England to board ship and journey to the colonies. Readers in England who turned to Winslow’s Good News from New England might have been forgiven for coming away from the book with a certain degree of confusion.
On the one hand, there is the inspiring account of how, in 1623, Winslow used the latest English medical treatments of his kind to treat the Wampanoag king Massasoit, who was afflicted with a life-threatening condition of the mouth and throat; the grateful king, according to Winslow, declared, “Now I see the English are my friends and love me; and whilst I live, I will never forget this kindness they have shown me.” On the other hand, there is the appalling violence that Pilgrims, led by Miles Standish, perpetrated against a group of Indigenous people who were suspected – not proven, mind you, but suspected – of planning violence against the Pilgrims. These passages of bad news from Good News from New England look ahead to the even more appalling violence and brutality of King Philip’s War, 50 years later.
Readers who want to get an outsider’s view of the Pilgrims should turn to Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan (1625). Morton, a Renaissance man with a classical education and a pleasure-loving, worldly outlook, could not have been more different from Separatists like Bradford and Standish; it was as if William Shakespeare or Christopher Marlowe had been sent forward in time to the English Puritan commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell. Morton founded his own Massachusetts settlement, called it “Ma-re Mount,” and offended the nearby Pilgrims in all sorts of ways. He traded firearms and liquor with the people of the local Indigenous nations, and he indulged in secular English traditions like erecting a Maypole on May Day (May 1st) for a day of feasting and dancing. When the Pilgrims had had enough of Morton’s “misrule” of his settlement, they arrested him, cut down the maypole, and shut down “Ma-re Mount.”
Morton describes, with a mixture of humour and bitterness, how a group of Pilgrims led by Miles Standish (whose short statute Morton mocks by calling him “Captain Shrimp”) treacherously negotiated Morton’s surrender, promising “that no violence should be offered to [Morton’s] person”, but then laid violent hands on Morton and “practiced to be rid of [him] upon any terms, as willingly as if he had been the very Hydra of the time.” The classical allusions to mythical monsters like the many-headed Hydra or the giant Briareus are characteristic of Morton; and fans of Nathaniel Hawthorne know that the saga of Morton’s ill-fated attempt to defy the Pilgrims inspired Hawthorne’s short story “The Maypole of Merry Mount” (1837).
The Mayflower Papers then moves ahead to King Philip’s War of 1675-76. It was a hideous conflict that, as Nathaniel Philbrick points out in his earlier Mayflower book, wrecked the economies of the New England colonies and virtually annihilated the Indigenous nations of the region. This grim period of New England’s colonial history is represented by two works.
The first, Mary Rowlandson’s The Sovereignty and Goodness of God (1682), tells the story of how Rowlandson, who survived a Native raid on her frontier community, was kidnapped and taken up into the New England back country. As they removed from one remote location to another, Rowlandson’s captors treated her sometimes with cruelty, sometimes with surprising kindness. Rowlandson looked to her religious faith to sustain her through the ordeal, and used her knitting skills to secure better food and better treatment during her time as a hostage. She even met King Philip himself, and asked him what he would require for her release. “He said two Coats and twenty shillings in Money, and a bushel of seed Corn, and some Tobacco. I thanked him for his love, but I knew the good news as well as the crafty Fox.”
Benjamin Church, who led the English forces in King Philip’s War, set down his memoirs of the conflict; and 40 years later, in 1716, his son Thomas Church published Benjamin Church’s account, under the frankly bizarre title of Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s War. While Church focuses upon what he calls the “inhumane Murders and Barbarities” of King Philip’s forces, the reader sees that there was plenty of inhumane murder and barbarity being perpetrated on both sides.
The Mayflower Papers may work best for students of history who have already read Philbrick’s Mayflower and want to review the primary-source documents that helped inspire Philbrick’s crafting of his best-selling work of history. Like its predecessor, The Mayflower Papers provides a salutary demythologizing of a heavily mythologized period of American history.
Read
March 1, 2024I have not finished this book yet. That’s why I haven’t rated it.
This is more of a book that I’m reading on and off and probably won’t finish for at least a year. I’ve done this in the past, especially with history style books.
I’ve always been a bit of a history buff and I especially love history about New England or historical fiction. That takes place in New England.
Maybe that’s because I’m from New England. This is writings on the mayflower, a particularly fascinating subject. However, this is not a book to read quickly.
For those who have not been to Plymouth Massachusetts, in particular, I highly recommend going. I especially recommend if you hold a fascination with the Pilgrims and their journey, Plymouth is a gorgeous community, bursting with New England charm. I can’t even imagine what it must’ve been like Wayback when.
Massachusetts in general is like a gigantic history book and for the people who live there I imagine it must be like living inside a history book. I mean everywhere you turn there is history. Massachusetts also has, beautiful, adorable little books stores dotted all across its lands.
It’s no wonder Massachusetts is known to be the State with the best educational system in America. Anyway, I will write an in-depth review when I finish this which will likely not be for a long time.
This is more of a book that I’m reading on and off and probably won’t finish for at least a year. I’ve done this in the past, especially with history style books.
I’ve always been a bit of a history buff and I especially love history about New England or historical fiction. That takes place in New England.
Maybe that’s because I’m from New England. This is writings on the mayflower, a particularly fascinating subject. However, this is not a book to read quickly.
For those who have not been to Plymouth Massachusetts, in particular, I highly recommend going. I especially recommend if you hold a fascination with the Pilgrims and their journey, Plymouth is a gorgeous community, bursting with New England charm. I can’t even imagine what it must’ve been like Wayback when.
Massachusetts in general is like a gigantic history book and for the people who live there I imagine it must be like living inside a history book. I mean everywhere you turn there is history. Massachusetts also has, beautiful, adorable little books stores dotted all across its lands.
It’s no wonder Massachusetts is known to be the State with the best educational system in America. Anyway, I will write an in-depth review when I finish this which will likely not be for a long time.
February 24, 2024
I had no idea that there was so much source material from colonial New England. From historical writings to Indian captivity narrative to a solider’s reminiscing to his son about King Phillip’s war this book captures the feel of living during the first hundred years of British immigration to the New World. Includes a bit about the first Thanksgiving, which apparently included deer as well as turkey.
October 7, 2020
Interesting but tough reading....
December 1, 2020
Source documents are my favorite.
February 6, 2025
An excellent companion to Mayflower. Fascinating to read the contemporaneous accounts of the extraordinary events and times from 1620-1676, after getting the context from Mayflower.
November 21, 2019
Tough read but gives a new (at least to me) historical view of life unrest and unresolved with the English with Capt Church, King Philip with the French, and so many different tribes of Native Americans taking sides with different leaders in early American history. Each group trying to conquer, find peace, raise families, with all different results. It was a challenging tough time in history just to stay alive.
Read
March 17, 2008I think I'm going to end up testing in Early American Lit when I take my comps... I love the literature, and the ideas and thoughts of the time period really attract me. I'm taking a Early American class in the fall, so this will act as a refresher course since I haven't read any of this stuff since my undergrad days with Dr. Gustaf VanCromphout (RIP).
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews