Pilgrims and the Mayflower

  • About 10 million Americans can trace their roots to the Pilgrims and the Mayflower
  • The Pilgrims first moved to Holland, then to the New World
  • It took the Mayflower 64 days to cross the Atlantic
  • The Mayflower actually carried three distinct groups of passengers
    • About half were, in fact, Separatists, the people we now know as the Pilgrims
    • Another handful on board were sympathetic to the Separatist cause but weren’t actually part of that core group of dissidents
    • The remaining passengers were hired hands—laborers, soldiers, and craftsmen
  • The Mayflower first landed at the tip of Cape Cod, in what is now Provincetown
  • Several of the Mayflower’s crew had made the journey at least once before, on either fishing or exploration trips
  • The Pilgrims never made any attempts to convert outsiders to their faith, including the Native Americans they encountered in America