2015-07-14
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PURITAN NEW ENGLAND
«Pilgrims» are people who make a journey for religious reasons. Bur for Americans the word has a special meaning. To them it means a small group of English men and women who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in 1620. They went to America to find religious freedom.
On September 16, 1620 the Pilgrims left the English port of Plymouth. They were accompanied by a number of other emigrants they called «Strangers.» The Pilgrims' ship was an old trading vessel, the Mayflower. They decided to land at the best place they could find. On December 21, 1620 they set up camp at a place they named Plymouth.
The frozen ground and the deep snow made it difficult for them to build houses. They had very little food. Before spring came, half of the little group were dead. The fifty survivors built better houses. They learned how to fish and hunt. Friendly Amerindians gave them seed of corn and showed them how to plant it.
Other English Puritans followed the Pilgrims to America. Ten years later a much larger group of almost a thousand colonists settled nearby in what became the Boston area. These people left England to escape the rule of a new king. The Boston settlement prospered from the start. Its population grew quickly. Many years later in 1691 it combined with the Plymouth colony under the name of Massachusetts.
