PILGRIM Pop Quiz
Did you know..?
Governor William Bradford organized the first Thanksgiving feast in the year 1621, in Massachusetts. The first Thanksgiving feast was held in the presence of around ninety Wampanoag Indians and the Wampanoag chief, Massasoit, was also invited.
The Pilgrims had a corporate sponsor for their voyage to America. – the London Virginia Company. But a dispute with their representative took place on the docks of Southampton prior to their departure, causing the contract to be voided. With the Pilgrims’ funds dwindling, they were forced to sell some of their butter to pay dock fees.
The first Thanksgiving celebration lasted three days. The drink that the Puritans brought with them on the Mayflower was beer.
Although there was no livestock on board the Mayflower, there probably was the usual cat or two to keep the rat population in check. It is recorded that at least two passengers brought pet dogs, a mastiff and a spaniel used to hunt during the first winter months and many historians believe there were more, but these two were the only ones mentioned in journals.
The Pilgrims clothes weren’t just black and white.
The Brewster family from Scrooby sailed on the Mayflower. The children had some interesting names: two girls named Fear and Patience, and three boys named Love, Wrestling... and Jonathan!
The Pilgrims from our area were Separatists - people who wanted to have their own church, and not be part of the state Church of England - at a time when this was illegal and forbidden.
Men from our region who sailed on the Mayflower signed an important document called the Mayflower Compact - it set out an agreement between the passengers to work together once they got to America - to ensure their survival. They ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time of year, and had to make their own agreement to come together as a ‘civil body politic’. The principles of this document were later said to have inspired the American Constitution.
There were 102 passengers on the Mayflower - 32 were children.
In 1955, a group of American descendants visited England and Holland and recorded their visit on plaques in Babworth and Scrooby - ‘On their first Pilgrimage – 152, by planes – to the Netherlands and England’ - similar plaques can be found across the country.
Thomas Bayard was the US Ambassador to the UK in the late 1890s - he laid a foundation stone at the John Robinson Memorial Church in Gainsborough, and was instrumental in getting William Bradford’s diary - which recorded the Pilgrims’ story - repatriated to the USA after it was found in the library at Fulham Palace in London.