While scanning "The Puritan Republic of The Massachusetts Bay" by Daniel Wait Howe (Cornell On-Line Books), I was surprised to read on page 4 that the Plymouth colony "did not greatly flourish. Eleven years after it was founded it had only about 500 population, and it never became an important factor in American colonial history.) On the eve of our annual First Thanksgiving celebration, this is an awful revelation to digest. I'm crushed. I wonder if Howe is expressing a minority opinion?

***-----Original Message----- ***From: Ed Finigan [mailto:efinigan@attbi.com] ***Sent: Sunday, November 03, 2002 10:32 AM ***To: MAYFLOWER-L@rootsweb.com ***Subject: [MFLR] Plymouth Colony "did not greatly flourish" *** *** ***While scanning "The Puritan Republic of The Massachusetts Bay" by Daniel ***Wait Howe (Cornell On-Line Books), I was surprised to read on ***page 4 that ***the Plymouth colony "did not greatly flourish. Eleven years after it was ***founded it had only about 500 population, and it never became an ***important ***factor in American colonial history.) *** ***On the eve of our annual First Thanksgiving celebration, this is ***an awful ***revelation to digest. I'm crushed. I wonder if Howe is expressing a ***minority opinion? Well, Ed, here's my opinion. What Howe says I think is true in its way. Plymouth Colony was always a poor colony whose poor soil and modest harbors offered no foundation for economic growth. It was soon hemmed in by better financed, more aggressive colonies with better harbors and better access to the interior, and it finally faded away as an independent colony after only about seven decades. So if success is measured by material wealth and the power to impose one's will on others Plymouth Colony was a failure. William Bradford wrote that before the people who were to become those Plymouth colonists we think of as the Pilgrims left England for Holland they, "saw the evil of these things in these parts, ...and as the Lord's free people joined themselves (by a covenant of the Lord) into a church estate, in the fellowship of the gospel, to walk in all His ways made known, or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavors, whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them. And that it cost them something this ensuing history will declare." (p. 9) Bradford's history of Plymouth Colony is in part a history of misadventures, of betrayals, and if you will of failures. It is a history of costs. But more than that it is a history of people who kept their faith and were sustained. Early in the history Bradford recounts an event which might be considered a pattern for the events which follow. The men of the congregation had been separated from the women and children.. The men were on the ship which was to take them all to Holland. While they were preparing to leave "the master espied a great company, both horse and foot, with bills and guns and other weapons, for the country was raised to take them." The master, "Swore his country's oath_sacremente_, ..weighed his anchor, hoised sails, and away," leaving the women and children behind. The men were soon caught in a fierce storm, the mariners themselves often despairing of life, and once with shrieks and cries gave over all, as if the ship had been foundered in the sea and they sinking without recovery. But when man's hope and help wholly failed, the Lord's power and mercy appeared in their recovery; for the ship rose again...And if modesty would suffer me, I might declare with what fervent prayers they cried unto the Lord in this great distress...even without any great distraction. When the water ran into their mouths and ears and the mariners cried out, 'We sink, we sink!' they cried (if not with miraculous, yet with a great height or degree of divine faith), 'Yet Lord Thou canst save! Yet Lord Thou canst save!' ...Upon which the ship did not only recover, but shortly after the violence of the storm began to abate, and the Lord filled their afflicted minds with such comforts as everyone cannot understand. (13) Again and again in the history Bradford recounts occasions upon which the colony faces disaster, often brought on through the perfidy of people they counted upon as friends. And again and again they turn to their faith and they are sustained. At one point they lose their patent--the legal foundation of their right to colonize--and Bradford writes that this is, "A right emblem...of the uncertain things of this world, that when men have toiled themselves for them, they vanish into smoke." (35) No, the Plymouth Colony did not "flourish." It did not enjoy material prosperity or political or military power. But Bradford wrote, "What could now sustain them but the Spirit of God and His grace? May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say:'Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and he heard their voice and looked on their adversity." (63) As an old man Bradford was grieved to see the people of Plymouth turning more and more to "the uncertain things of this world." But his words have survived as a testament to a people who left behind their goods, their homes, their friends, and often their families, trusting not in their own strength, but in something larger than themselves, and living not for themselves, but for something greater. It seems to me that people who do not share the particular faith of the Pilgrims can appreciate what they did, and it seems to me that in the light of what they did, the fact that they did not "flourish" doesn't matter very much. citations from William Bradford's _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison, in the Modern Library edition of 1967 published by Randonm House of New York