William Bradford
Bradford was born in Bristol, England in 1590. After becoming part of a Puritan group which came to view the Anglican Church as increasingly and irredeemably corrupt, he became a leader in their movement first to separate from the church and then, to escape persecution, flee from England. This flight took Bradford first to Holland and then to the New World where he would become a thirty-term governor of the Pilgrim colony at Plymouth. Bradford is the author and a central figure either by participation or observation. Though he died in 1657, his account would not be published for another two centuries.
Squanto
While most of the leading figures in the account are Pilgrims and other Puritans and Britons, one of the most familiar figures for Americans (at least toward the end of November) is Squanto. One of the accounts in the text which differs significantly from the mythology of colonial America which Bradford recounts is the first Thanksgiving, at which Squanto has gone down in history as a major player. In reality, Squanto was truly a monumental figure of importance whose role in Bradford’s history situates him as much more than merely the dinner guest for which he is best known.
Thomas Morton
Thomas Morton was an Anglican leader of the Merry Mount colony which came to be viewed as a rival and potential threat to the Puritans of Plymouth. Merry Mount would eventually evolve into the town of Quincy which produced two of the first six American Presidents: John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams. In his own account of the times, Morton's portrayal is significantly at odds with that of Bradford's more severe interpretation of his followers.
John Alden and Myles Standish
Arguably the two most famous names from the Plymouth colony both show up in Bradford’s text. Thanks primarily to a poem by Longfellow, Alden and Standish are today mostly famous for their rivalry for the affections of a woman named Priscilla which gave rise to the famous line “Speak for yourself, John Alden.” Alden is, indeed, mentioned in relation to Priscilla, but barely merits mention. By contrast, Myles Standish is a fairly major character. The most noteworthy thing about them for the reader familiar only with the myth may well be that neither were actually members of the Separatist Puritan group which has become the most distinctive characteristic of the Pilgrim colony at Plymouth.
John Winthrop
Another very influential figure who shows up in Bradford’s account is the future Governor of Massachusetts and good friend John Winthrop. Unlike Alden and Standish, Winthrop’s significance is most assuredly related to his standing as a Puritan. Like Bradford, he would become of one the figures from the Plymouth colony to become an essential figure in the development of colonial America as a direct result of his managerial skills.
