Leiden in The Netherlands is a delightful city of about 125,000. If you overlook the bicycles, cars, and modern buses, the center city is much as it might have been in the 1600s when the future Pilgrims settled there in 1609. After a year in Amsterdam, Separatists religious refugees from northern England relocated to Leiden to get away from church conflicts among other English religious refugee groups. At that time, Leiden was a significant industrial […]
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William and Dorothy Bradford – Mayflower Voyagers
In 1620 William and Dorothy Bradford sailed on Mayflower from England to New England. A great deal of what we know about the establishment of the Plymouth colony comes from Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation. Four hundred years later this book is still a good source of information about the Pilgrim story, though it is obviously written from the English perspective. Today historians go to great lengths to tell the same story from the Native perspective. History has preserved […]
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Edward and Elizabeth Winslow – Mayflower Survivors
Edward and Elizabeth Winslow, two of the eighteen couples aboard the 1620 Mayflower voyage, most likely met in Leiden, in the Netherlands. A few hundred English Separatists lived in exile there before a small group of them crossed the Atlantic to establish a new English colony. They grew up in a tumultuous time in England’s history and left England for Holland as young adults. They married in Leiden in 1618. Elizabeth, acting on her own […]
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Leiden and the Future Pilgrims
Today Leiden in the Netherlands is a delightful city of about 125,000. The center city is much as it was hundreds of years ago, but easily reached today by modern bus service. In 1609 the Scrooby Separatists religious refugees relocated there from Amsterdam. At that time Leiden was a significant industrial community of around 15,000 and growing. By 1650 the town had grown to a city 55,000. Though I grew up knowing our family tree […]
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