Puritan Beginnings

While some colonies in the south of what would later become the U.S.A. were founded after commercial enterprises, the north-eastern region known as New England was settled by a group of Puritans, called "the Pilgrims", or later called "the Pilgrim Fathers", who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620.

They founded Plymouth Plantation. The record of their experiment is carefully kept in William Bradford's Of Plymourth Plantation, a detailed account of the Pilgrims' first years in America.