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The Plymouth Colony was an English colonial venture in North America from 1620 until 1691. The colony contained roughly what is now Bristol County , Plymouth County , and Barnstable County, Massachusetts . FOUNDING FATHERS Plymouth Colony was founded by a strict, fundamentalist separatist Puritan sect of Protestant Christians, who, after separating from the Anglican Church, left England for Holland; then later sailed from Holland to the New World and North America. The Pilgrim colonists obtained a land patent from the London Virginia Company in 1620, before that company was dissolved. They founded the colony in a location the company did not have rights to, and later reached an agreement with the Plymouth Council For New England , which had been granted a charter for the land in 1620. VOYAGES OF THE MAYFLOWER The '' Mayflower '' left Plymouth (England) for a second time on September 6, 1620 without her sister ship '' Speedwell ,'' which had ultimately been deemed unseaworthy, and entered Cape Cod Harbor on November 11, 1620. Their first landfall was near today's Provincetown where they sought fresh water. The first governing document of the colony was the Mayflower Compact , drafted and ratified by the first group of colonists aboard their ship, the '' Mayflower '', as it lay off-shore upon arrival. On December 21, 1620, 102 Pilgrims from the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock on the western shore of Cape Cod Bay , in southeastern Massachusetts . Many believe that the Pilgrims undertook preliminary surveys elsewhere, before landing and settling near Plymouth Rock . NEW PLYMOUTH The first settlement of the colony was "New Plymouth", later Plymouth, Massachusetts . The site was chosen because it had a reliable supply of fresh water and was likely the site of an abandoned Wampanoag village. By the end of the first winter, almost half of the settlers were dead (probably from starvation and disease), including their leader John Carver . Thus began one of the best-intended, historically renowned, and yet strangely ill-fated colonial ventures in America (after the Roanoke Island Settlement and Jamestown ). William Bradford became governor in 1621 upon the death of Carver, served for eleven consecutive years, and was elected to various other terms until his death in 1657. On March 22, 1621, the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony signed a peace treaty with Massasoit of the Wampanoag s. As the Pilgrims arrived without agricultural skills, the Wampanoag's knowledge of corn and bean cultivation were likely essential for their survival. The second group of settlers sailed on the '' Fortune ,'' which arrived November 10, 1621. The third group arrived on the ''Anne'' and the ''Little James'' in August 1623. The fourth group arrived in June of 1629 on six ships and landed at Naumkeag ( Salem , Mass.) The fifth group arrived June 1, 1630. They landed at Nantasket and settled Mattapan , which they called Dorchester , after their native city in England. On June 12, 1630, the ''Arbella'' and 15 other vessels arrived at Salem, Mass. with 800 to 900 people, being the Massachusetts Company under Governor John Winthrop and went to Boston . The patent of Plymouth Colony was surrendered by Bradford to the Freemen in 1640, minus a small reserve of three tracts of land. When the Massachusetts Bay Colony got its new charter in 1691, Plymouth ended its history as a separate colony. FROM BRADFORD'S JOURNAL '' OF PLYMOUTH PLANTATION '' (Describing the Pilgrims safe arrival at Cape Cod aboard the Mayflower) "Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees & blessed ye God of heaven, who had brought them over ye vast & furious ocean, and delivered them from all ye periles & miseries therof, againe to set their feete on ye firme and stable earth, their proper elemente. And no marvell if they were thus joyefull, seeing wise Seneca was so affected with sailing a few miles on ye coast of his owne Italy; as he affirmed, that he had rather remaine twentie years on his way by land, then pass by sea to any place in a short time; so tedious & dreadfull was ye same unto him. But hear I cannot but stay and make a pause, and stand half amased at this poore peoples presente condition; and so I thinke will the reader too, when he well considered ye same. Being thus passed ye vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their preparation (as may be remembred by yt which wente before), they had now no friends to wellcome them, nor inns to entertaine or refresh their weatherbeaten bodys, no houses or much less townes to repaire too, to seeke for succoure. .. Let it also be considred what weake hopes of supply & succoure they left behinde them, yt might bear up their minds in this sade condition and trialls they were under; and they could not but be very smale. It is true, indeed, ye affections & love of their brethren at Leyden was cordiall & entire towards them, but they had little power to help them, or them selves; and how ye case stode betweene them & ye marchants at their coming away, hath already been declared. What could not sustaine them but ye spirite of God & his grace? May not & ought not the children of these fathers rightly say : Our faithers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this willdernes; but they cried unto ye Lord, and he heard their voyce, and looked on their adversitie…" CONTEXT Plymouth was the second permanent English settlement in the Americas, the first being Jamestown, Virginia . Early, abandoned settlements include the Popham Colony (present-day Maine ), the "Lost Colony" of Roanoke Island (present-day North Carolina ), and Cuper's Cove and Bristol's Hope in present-day Newfoundland . SEE ALSO
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