William Bradford

William Bradford

William Bradford was born in 1590 in Yorkshire and died in 1657 in Massachusetts. 

He was one of the Pilgrim Fathers and was the leader of the Plymouth settlement which left Plymouth UK on September 6^th 1620 on the Mayflower ship.

 At the age of 12 William began to attend Separatists church meetings. Separatists were a group of people who wanted to be separate from the Church of England to create a ‘pure’ church. However at this time this was illegal in England to practice any religion other than the Church of England so they had to meet in secrecy.  When William was 18 the Separatists moved to The Netherlands where they were able to practice their religion more freely. There he married and had a son. In 1620 the Separatists decided to start their own colony in America so therefore William led the voyage to Massachusetts on the Mayflower. In November 1620 the Mayflower landed in Plymouth Bay Massachusetts. They were later known as the Pilgrims because of their quest to find religious freedom. Upon arrival William Bradford signed the first set of laws for the colony which was known as The Mayflower Compact. In 1630 the Massachusetts colony was established.

Bradford was one of the first to celebrate Thanksgiving in November 1621 when the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians gathered at Plymouth for an autumn harvest celebration. 

William Bradford’s work ‘Of Plymouth Plantation’ was not published until 1856. He begun this work in 1630 and it is significant for the establishment of American identity as it is an account of the Pilgrims who voyaged to America and it is one of the first a first-person account of what life was like in America during early colonialism. His document is one of the best records of the Pilgrims struggles and gives an insight to their daily lives of the colonist for 27 years after arriving in Plymouth. William Bradford also helped shape and stabilize the political institutions of the first permanent colony in New England.