Pilgrims and Puritans

The Pilgrims of New England were a group of settlers led by religious separatists who dissented against the Church of England.  In 1620 Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower set sail for Virginia but were blown northward by an Atlantic storm and landed instead in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The 102 colonists needed an economic enterprise suitable to a climate that could sustain enough crops for sale to Britain. The Pilgrims did grow corn and cattle for self-sufficiency.  Along with that, expeditions ventured along the New England coast for furs.  Both of these allowed the colony to pay back their London backers for the journey to America.

The Puritans, a larger religious dissenting group just to the north of the Pilgrims, soon over shadowed them.  In 1630 the Puritans founded Salem and Boston, Massachusetts.  Over 25,000 Puritans settled in Massachusetts, and Boston became overcrowded with inadequate pasture and many religious conflicts.  Puritans moved on into the Connecticut River Valley, around the shores of Narragansett Bay and into southern New Hampshire.

In Virginia in 1637, seventeen years after Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, Pequot Indians from Connecticut made a desperate attempt to keep hold of their hunting grounds. Colonists were expanding into their native lands. William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Colony wrote of burning a Pequot village:  "It was a fearful sight to see them frying in the fire, the horrible stink and scent there of."  The Pequot were either slaughtered or sold into slavery.  After 38 years of settlement along the coast, uninterrupted expansion followed. 

Next time...A Different Kind of Frontier System
______________________________________

Today in Pioneer History: "On August 24, 1814, British forces under General Robert Ross overwhelm American militiamen at the Battle of Bladensburg, Maryland, and march unopposed into Washington, D.C during the War of 1814.