Plymouth Plantation 1620 - 1647

I was pleased to find this book about a relative of mine. Hard to believe that it was actually in print

William Bradford is my direct ancestor and therefore I was raised knowing some things about him and the Pilgrims who traveled here on the Mayflower. Yet it wasn't until many years later that I read his own account "Of Plymouth Plantation" which was written during the years 1620 - 1642. The sense of adventure and human drama found in this book are very gripping despite the often florid style of language used at the time. Once can't help get caught up in these people's struggles and imagine how difficult it must have been for them in so many ways before during and after their treacherous 2 1/2 month sea voyage. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in history as it was written concurrent with what was happening and by someone who was instrumental in creating this history. One does not have to be directly descended from the Pilgrims to find this story compelling. Also look up Cotton Mather's biography of William Bradford written in 1702 and "William Bradford: Plymouth's Faithful Pilgrim" by Gary D. Schmidt.

Excellent book! I read this in combination with the Governer William Bradford's Letter Book and Mourts Relations and Good Newes from New England by Edward Winslow. I am really glad that I have done it this way, because there is further information in the Good Newes from New England that fills in the gaps of certain events. This is William Bradford's point of view, and the information in it is amazing. If you are into history, then it doesn't get any better than this. Its not very often that you have the opportunity to see events through someone elses eyes, and this does it.

I came across this book quite by accident and didn't think it would be much of a read. Generally speaking I don't read histories and one from the early 1600's was a pretty daunting task - or so I thought. In fact, it was a great tale of adventure and faith and an extremely insightful and thought provoking book about how this country was started and what it must have looked like to those who arrived here some 350 years ago.I really did love this book.Bradford is an engaging writer whose prose isn't hard to understand. In places his understatement about the death and hardship faced almost constantly is even amusing. Nothing of the kind of challenges that the Leyden pilgrims faced in Massachusetts will seem familiar to a modern reader. Just the same, the fact that it all happened is fascinating. One can almost imagine being there, looking over the decks of the Mayflower and facing all that December gray and wilderness and wondering what you were doing coming here. Told in first person it reads like an adventure as much as a history.The pilgrims here are also quite human and not at all the diorama characters of a first graders Thanksgiving craft project. They face social challenges and the horrors of death and disease. Attacks by natives actually occured on occasion. The dream of a sort of providence is one that proves difficult in the real world. Bradford mourns the loss of these ideals and the people who imported them. There's something a little sad in his later passages, whether it be age or a truly lost paradise one never really knows. But what Bradford imagined as a sort of religious nirvana clearly doesn't pan out in the end. Nevertheless it is well worth the journey. I highly recommend a read of this American classic.

William Bradford spends the entire first chapter of his book describing the Separatist religious movement--he was NOT a Puritan, contrary to the previous review. Bradford's writing style, while sometimes introspective and monotone, is in many instances the most eloquent of all early American authors, using very thoughtful and beautiful metaphors. To describe the success of the Plymouth Colony after about 20 years, he wrote "Thus out of small beginnings greather things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation". Bradford describes those small beginnings in his book, from the Pilgrims troubles in England to their departure and life in Holland. After twelve years in Holland, the Pilgrims made a teary departure from their friends to come on the Mayflower to America. As they are about to board the ship that will take them to England and on to America, Bradford in a sentimental outpouring writes "they went aboard and their friends with them, where truely doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting, to see what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound . . . But the tide, which stays for no man, calling them away that were thus loath to depart, their reverend pastor falling down on his knees with watery cheeks commended them . . . And then with mutual embrases and many tears they took their leave one of another, which proved to be the last leave to many of them." It was a "last leave to many", because after Bradford writes the only existing first-hand account of the Mayflower's voyage, and describes briefly some of the explorations made by the Pilgrims, he then describes the horrible first winter which killed half the Pilgrims: "it pleased God to visit us daily with death, and with so general a disease that the living were scarce able to bury the dead, and the well not in any measure suffiient to tend to the sick". Written in an English that is easier to read than Shakespeare, yet old enough to remind the reader of the books historical value and place in American history. It's plain style should remind us that Bradford was not an English elitist governor like those that would come later such as Winthrop, Sewell, Winslow, and Cotton, but was in fact a simple subsistence farmer by trade. If you want a fluffy, inaccurate, and childish portrayal of Pilgrim life, read a high school history book. If you want the real thing, read "Of Plymouth Plantation" by William Bradford. It's the first American classic