NEW ENGLAND BEFORE THE PILGRIM FATHERS LANDED
[ [1] ] From Smith's "Description of New England," published in London in 1616. Smith's exploration of New England was made after he had become separated from the Jamestown colony, of which in 1608, he had been president. He went there under an engagement with London merchants to fish for cod, barter for furs and explore the country for settlement. It was he who at the request of Prince Charles named the country New England.
[ [2] ] Probably the Merrimac.
THE FIRST VOYAGE OF THE "MAYFLOWER"
[ [1] ] William Bradford had already been a leading member of a little dissenting congregation in England, when, in 1608, it fled from England to Holland, and in 1620 settled at Plymouth, Mass. A year after the arrival at Plymouth Bradford was elected Governor of the Colony, and, with the exception of two short intervals, held this office until his death nearly forty years afterward.
Bradford's "History of Plymouth" is a classic in New England historical literature—the foundation-stone, in fact, of the history of New England. A curious item in the survival of the manuscript is that, at the time of the evacuation of Boston by the British, during the Revolution, it disappeared mysteriously, to be discovered eighty years afterward in the palace of the Bishop of London. More than forty years after this discovery, the manuscript was restored by the diocese of London to the commonwealth of Massachusetts, which now preserves it in the State Library in Boston.
[ [2] ] Now known as Provincetown, where a lofty monument on a hilt back of the harbor, dedicated in 1910, commemorates the landing there of the Pilgrim Fathers. While the Mayflower lay in this harbor, Paregrine White was born, the first child of English parentage born in New England.
[ [3] ] The landing at Plymouth was effected on December 21.
THE FIRST NEW YORK SETTLEMENTS
[ [1] ] From Wassenaer's "Description of the first settlement of New Netherland." Printed in Hart's "American History Told by Contemporaries." Wassenaer was a Dutchman, and wrote contemporaneously with the events he describes. After Hudson's discovery of the Hudson River, Dutch ships were sent over to Manhattan Island to establish an agency for the collection of furs. Rude cabins were pitched and lived in at the southern end of the island but these did not constitute a permanent settlement; they were a mere trading-post. The trade became so profitable, however, that something more permanent was desired, and in 1623 the West India Company dispatched ships with thirty families as the nucleus of a colony to be established near the present site of Albany. Not until two years later was it decided that the headquarters of the colony should be on Manhattan Island. Two ships were then sent out to establish there a permanent and more extensive settlement.