The colony looks to the fur trade to pay its debts
The method devised for repaying what was a stiff debt for the young colony, as one writer puts it, “shows considerable business ingenuity.” With ownership transferred from London to Plymouth, the plantation became a virtual corporation in fact. Two important matters still had to be decided. Should all the settlers share in the disposition of the corporate lands and assets and in the obligation of repayment to the adventurers? How would they be able to guarantee satisfaction of the London men? It was wisely decided to include as holders of shares, or “purchasers,” all men, whatever their former status, who were either heads of families or single and not indentured servants. At the 1627 division of assets in the form of land and cattle, every such person received twenty acres of tillable land to add to the one-acre portion allotted him when the plantation had ended the “common course.” The livestock was parceled out for a time among twelve groups, a total of 156 individuals, with every six persons receiving one cow and two goats. These “purchasers,” of whom in 1640 fifty-three were listed as living in Plymouth and five in England, were to benefit from subsequent divisions of land as the colony opened up.
The immediate task of paying the Londoners fell upon a group of eight leaders, including William Bradford, Miles Standish, Isaac Allerton, Edward Winslow, William Brewster, John Howland, John Alden, and Thomas Prence, known as the “Undertakers.” These men founded a partnership to manage the fur trade of the colony for six years, the time during which the returns from the Pilgrims’ most profitable business enterprise were to be devoted to paying the debt and importing essential English goods. This became the business of the eight who took possession at once of the company boats and “the whole stock of furs, fells, beads, corn, wampampeak, hatchets, knives, &c.”
It may be asked why the “Undertakers” were willing to saddle themselves with such a responsibility. The answer is their sense of obligation to their old friends in Leyden, as well as their fidelity to the London merchants. Most of the former adventurers had so opposed sending over any more people from Leyden that the beloved Pastor Robinson prophetically, before his death, looked for no further help until means came from Plymouth itself. The first example of such aid would cost the partnership £500, the amount paid for the emigration in 1629 of what was a welcome but “weak” addition to the colony.