William Bradford

William Bradford was born into a prosperous family of farmers. As a teenager, he began attending sermons delivered by church reformers, despite the fact that his family believed all reforms to the church to be heretical. Bradford eventually became a Separatist—a Christian who believed in separating from the established Church of England. In the 1610s, Bradford fled to the Dutch Republic to avoid persecution in his own country. It was during this period that Bradford and some of his fellow Separatists began to entertain the idea of settling in America. In 1620, Bradford and his wife set sail aboard the Mayflower, along with a few dozen other Separatists. Bradford rose to become the governor of the Plymouth Colony from 1621 to 1632, and later served as governor from 1645 to 1656. During these years, Bradford was instrumental in instituting a fledgling system of democracy in the colony, and in negotiating with Native American tribes in the surrounding area. His journal of the colony’s history, Of Plymouth Plantation, is still regarded as one of the key primary sources of early American history. He died in 1657, a highly respected colonist.