William Bradford

William Bradford was an Englishman who settled Plymouth Colony with the Pilgrims in 1620. The Pilgrims traveled to the New World to find a place where they could practice religion and community life without interference from the Church of England. As governor of the colony for most of his adult life, Bradford helped it survive hardships to become a permanent settlement.

Early life

Bradford was born in Austerfield, Yorkshire, England, in March 1590. His father, a farmer named William, died when Bradford was one. His mother, Alice, died six years later in 1597. Relatives cared for Bradford after that.

Bradford began attending a Puritan church when he was twelve. Puritans were Christians who wanted to reform the Church of England, which Puritans felt had too many fancy rituals. Around age sixteen, Bradford joined a church of Separatists in Scrooby, England, led by John Robinson (1575–1625) and William Brewster (c. 1566–1644). Separatists were Puritans who wanted to separate from the Church of England.

The Church of England considered Puritanism a threat to its power, so Puritans were often harassed in England. In 1608, the Scrooby congregation moved to Holland to practice religion freely. For twelve years, first in Amsterdam and then in Leyden, the Scrooby congregation experimented with living as an English community in a foreign land. Bradford worked in the textile industry during this time and married Dorothy May. He had a son with Dorothy and three children with Alice Carpenter Southworth, whom he married in 1623 after Dorothy's death years earlier.

The Pilgrims

The Scrooby congregation eventually decided to leave Holland. Living in Dutch country made it hard for the community to retain its English character and customs. The congregation did not wish, however, to return to persecution in England.

In London, the Scrooby congregation found investors from the Virginia Company who wanted to send settlers to the New World for harvesting its resources for a profit. In 1620, Bradford and about one hundred others sailed on the Mayflower with plans to settle in the area that would become Virginia . In November they arrived around present-day Cape Cod, Massachusetts , and by December they landed at Plymouth Bay and settled for the winter.

At Plymouth Bay, the Pilgrims were outside the area where the Virginia Company had power to establish colonies. (See Colonization .) This forced the Pilgrims to create their own government, which they did under a legal agreement called the Mayflower Compact.

Settling into colonial life

Half of the colonists at Plymouth died during the winter of 1620, including Governor John Carver (c. 1576–1621). The colonists elected Bradford to be their new governor. Bradford organized the colonists to build a community, find food, and negotiate with Native Americans as necessary. He also had responsibility for overseeing justice and managing the colony's business affairs.

Bradford and the colonists met a Native American named Squanto, who had spent some time in England and spoke English. Squanto (1600?–1623) taught the colonists how to plant corn and preserve fish. Bradford negotiated with the chief of the local Wampanoag tribe for a peace treaty that lasted four decades.

Over the years under Bradford's guidance, Plymouth Colony survived early hardships and became a permanent settlement. The investors did not find it as profitable as other New World colonies. Still Plymouth Colony managed to pay off its initial debt by 1648.

Later years

In his later years, Bradford taught himself how to read the Bible in Hebrew, and he studied Greek, classical poetry, and philosophy.

From 1630 until 1650, Bradford wrote a book about the Pilgrims, called Of Plymouth Plantation. The book reflects Bradford's transition from viewing Native Americans as savages to respecting them. Toward the end of his life, Bradford thought that the colonists should purchase native lands that they wished to use, an idea that other colonists rejected.

Bradford died in Plymouth Colony in May 1657.