William Bradford (colonial governor)

Bradford (2nd from right in the foreground) and other "Pilgrim Fathers" at prayer before departure
Historical fantasy by Robert W. Weir, 1844, in the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington

William Bradford (March 1590 in Austerfield , Yorkshire , England ; † May 1657 ) was one of the " Pilgrim Fathers " one of the first colonists in New England , co-founder and later governor of the Plymouth Colony .

Life

Bradford grew up in Oyster Field, a village near Doncaster in the county of South Yorkshire on. During his childhood he was influenced by the sermons of separatist congregationalists . This led to his joining the separatist parish in Scrooby ( Nottinghamshire ) in 1606 and emigrating to the Netherlands in 1608 to avoid persecution by the Anglican state church. There he learned how to make silk. In 1613 he married the sixteen-year-old Dorothy May and two years later they had a son named John.

Since the English Congregationalists could not make friends with Dutch Calvinism and feared that their children would become estranged from them, part of the community made the crossing on board the Mayflower to the New World in 1620 . Bradford was one of the authors and signatories of the Mayflower Compact and co-founder of the Plymouth Colony on the soil of what is now Massachusetts . In April 1621 he was elected to succeed John Carver as governor of the colony, which was repeated thirty times, except in the years in which he renounced in favor of Thomas Prence and Edward Winslow . Shortly after taking office for the first time, he negotiated with Massasoit from the Wampanoag tribe to renounce land claims and sign a peace treaty.

In 1623 he married for the second time, and three children were born in the marriage.

Bradford also organized the first Thanksgiving Day in New England in the fall of 1621 . He also served four times as a member of the New England Confederation and was twice its president.

In his History of Plimouth Plantation , which was written between 1620 and 1647, he describes life in the new colonies, among other things. It is considered an important document in early American history. Bradford's grandson Samuel gave the manuscript of the report to Reverend Thomas Prince, who placed it in his library in the steeple of Old South Church in Boston in 1728. Since 1776, the manuscript was considered lost in New England. After it was rediscovered in the library of the Bishop of London at Fulham Palace in 1855 , a full transcript of the work was first published in 1856. On the initiative of Senator George Frisbie Hoar, the manuscript of the book was returned to New England in 1897.

Individual evidence

1. ^ N. Philbrick: Mayflower. Departure to the New World. Munich 2006. p. 213.
2. ^ N. Philbrick: Mayflower. Departure to the New World. Munich 2006. p. 393.
3. ^ N. Philbrick: Mayflower. Departure to the New World. Munich 2006. p. 396.
4. ^ N. Philbrick: Mayflower. Departure to the New World. Munich 2006. p. 398.
5. ^ N. Philbrick: Mayflower. Departure to the New World. Munich 2006. p. 399.

literature

Work editions

• History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647 . 2 volumes. Edited by WC Ford. Massachusetts Historical Society / Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1912. Digital copies on the Internet Archive pages : Volume I , Volume II .
• Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647 . Edited by Samuel Eliot Morison . Knopf, New York 1952. Numerous new editions, most recently in 2006, ISBN 9780394438955 .

Secondary literature

• Douglas Anderson: William Bradford's Books: Of Plimmoth Plantation and the Printed Word . Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2003, ISBN 9780801870743 .
• Thomas Finlayson Henderson:  Bradford, William (1590-1657) . In: Leslie Stephen (Ed.): Dictionary of National Biography . Volume 6:  Bottomley - Browell. , MacMillan & Co, Smith, Elder & Co., New York City / London 1886, pp. 161 - 164 (English).
• David Levin: William Bradford: The Value of Puritan Historiography . In: Everett Emerson (Ed.): Major Writers of Early American Literature . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1972, pp. 11-31.
• Jesper Rosenmeier: "With My Owne Eyes": William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation . In: Sacvan Bercovitch (Ed.): Typology and Early American Literature . University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst 1972, pp. 69-105.
• Bradford Smith: Bradford of Plymouth . Lippincott, Philadelphia 1951.
• Perry D. Westbrook: William Bradford. Twayne, Boston 1978, ISBN 080577243X .