400 years on, how the Mayflower Pilgrims can still inspire us...

In 1620, 102 ill-prepared settlers landed two months later than planned, in the wrong place on the eastern coast of North America.

They were a mixture of ‘saints’ (asylum-seeking members of separatist Puritan congregations) and ‘strangers’ (economic migrants necessary for the financial success of the venture). By the next summer, half of them were dead. Yet, from this inauspicious beginning, the impact of the Mayflower settlement still resonates 400 years later.

Writing Mayflower Lives (2019) I explored this venture through the lives of 14 of those who took part. Well, actually it is 15, as Priscilla Mullins and John Alden are a double act. Their faith and courage continue to inspire, for all our cultural difference, as does their ability to create a community from both ‘saints’ and ‘strangers’. And, in contrast to what came after, they generally had constructive relationships with Native Americans. For all these reasons they repay study and remembering. This is a brief introduction to these ‘Mayflower Lives’.