Stephen and Elizabeth Hopkins – Mayflower Survivors

I’m hiding out in the 17th Century until news in the 21st Century improves. The Stephen Hopkins Family make a marvelous distraction. They traveled to Plymouth, MA on the Mayflower in 1620. Stephen and Elizabeth are one of the more famous and fascinating couples among the eighteen couples aboard. On this trip to North American Stephen traveled with his second wife, Elizabeth Fisher Hopkins, and three children. Elizabeth was pregnant with a fourth child when they […]

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John Carver Mayflower Governor

Pilgrim Governor John Carver

This blog about Pilgrim Governor John Carver is an edited version of an article I first published three years ago. I’m running a summer special of a few of my favorite old posts because 1) I’m taking some time away from my computer to vacation; 2) I am so very weary of what has been going on in the news lately that I want to hide in the 1600s; and 3) I’ve come up with […]

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Thanksgiving 400

Thanksgiving will soon be upon us again. This one is the 400th anniversary of the first feast between the Pokanoket people and the newly arrived English settlers. The version of this encounter we’ve taught school children for generations is a bit truncated and lopsided, but there really was a three-day feast in Plymouth, MA back in the fall of 1621. To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the event, the Sowams Heritage Organization   is hosting a […]

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Pilgrim Hall

As I revisit Plymouth this week to soak up the history of the town’s role our country’s history, one important stop is Pilgrim Hall. Today Plymouth is a thriving community of around 60,000 people. In 1620 the population had been reduced from 102 Mayflower passengers to the fifty-one who lived through the first grueling winter. These English survivors established their new Plimoth Plantation on the site of an abandoned Patuxet village. A pandemic had swept through […]

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Mayflower II

This week and next I return to Plymouth and Provincetown where I did some of the research for Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures. Our first stop is Plimoth Plantation – recently renamed Plimoth Patuxet to acknowledge the community’s name when Indigenous people occupied the area. Plimoth Patuxet is a living museum. People dressed in period outfits talk about their lives in the 17th century. Today there is an in-door museum and theatre and […]

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