What do you think of Pilgrims and Puritans?

32 comments

1. Not a fan of the uber religious.

2. Virginian here. Yes, we learned about them since the Plymouth colony was probably as important as the Jamestown colony during the initial settling of the American Colonies.

3. I don’t

4. Religious radicals who were comically unprepared for the challenges of building a new settlement from scratch on alien shores.

5. Learn about them? Yes.

   Any feelings towards them? No, they are a historic novelty.

6. WV->Western PA here. I think they were zealots who gave this country a lot of it’s deepest cultural problems. But you can’t beat the names. I mean, Cotton Mather? Cmon.

7. The more I learn about them the less I like them.

8. I don’t think Puritans are romanticized in MA. They weren’t romanticized in my education.

9. I have a bit of resentment, I think a lot of our social hang-ups go back to the Pilgrims and Puritans.

   Especially “Work Ethic” and how we treat the poor.

10. They was religious fanatics but they did deserve freedom of religion

11. asked by the puritan settler himself

12. We learned about them in Minnesota. Vaguely recall doing some sort of skit about the first Thanksgiving.

13. The quakers make decent oatmeal.

14. I don’t think about them, but they are taught in most US history classes regardless of grade.

15. Cool hats.

16. I’m in the weird position of being a Plymouth Colony descendant ( ancestor wasn’t on the Mayflower, but came over on the second ship, The Fortune) and Indigenous (enrolled member).

    They were brave, dedicated and unprepared. Humble in some ways and arrogant in others. Sometimes I get angry when I think about them, sometimes I feel sorry for them. It’s…complicated.

17. Very interested since I got into Ancestry.com almost a year ago. I was very excited to learn I come from Rebecca Nurse even though I later realized millions of American people alive today also do so I’m not that special but I am very interested in early colonial days now.

    I now think that the Salem Witch trials were the beginning of the end for Puritanism and their assumption that America should be a theocracy instead of run by civilian authorities.

    They were primitive of course in our eyes but they were really trying to figure out what this country should be, and did a fantastic job seminal and formative Americans and can’t help feeling love and pride and gratitude when I study about them and all they suffered to make a new world for us today ❤ 😃🇺🇸👍

18. We learned about them, yeah. Plymouth Rock and all that jazz. But I wouldn’t say we learned enough about them to hold any strong feelings towards them. To me they’re just a part of our history, but I wouldn’t consider the nuances of their settlement to be that important to somebody learning an overview of US history if that makes sense?

19. Learned about them, sure. Certainly not romanticized in any way. Possibly a more local romanization would be Juan Ponce De Leon and St Augustine. We went on school trips to see Castillo de San Marcos and remember going through the old wooden school.

20. We learned about them, but it was a fairly neutral take. I personally developed a disgust for them due to reading the Crucible and learning about how rigid their society was. That’s not to say that the Virginia colony was exactly religiously tolerant either.

21. I’m from the Midwest. I learned about the Pilgrims and the Puritans, but they weren’t romanticized. It could be the textbooks, or it could be that I went to a Lutheran school, so we didn’t really embrace or romanticize Puritan beliefs.

22. We learned about their early settlements and how they arrived. I recall reading the Scarlet Letter as well.

    It’s impossible to really judge them by comparing them today. Some people claim they’re the basis of our problems today, but this isn’t really accurate. They existed in a period of extreme religiosity. Mennonites were being killed by the Dutch. Catholics by the English Scots. Lutherans by the Austrians. Pilgrims and Puritans were reformers, but otherwise average. All of those groups came to America and their beliefs were reflected here.

    It’s very possible that their beliefs also led to their success. The area they settled was a very rugged land. They could just have easily been another Jamestown. If you visit Plimouth Plantation, you’ll struggle to relate to anything. It’s more like an island beach town.

    But just as we can’t really judge a very different period of time, we can’t really romanticize it. There is very little of their culture that relates to today.

23. Learned about, yes. But as for romanticized no not really. In Kentucky the local romanticized history has to do with early mountain men/explorers like Daniel Boone

24. Lots of my direct ancestors came 1620 to 1630.

    They seemed like religious zealots. They also accused a bunch of people of witchcraft.

    Brave, tough, and a bit crazy. As a genealogist going through records? I mean my someX great grandmother neighbor had to go to court for wearing ribbons above her station. My something Xs great grandfather had to pay a fine for talking to my unwed grandmother (they married after) distracting her.

    They wanted to kill people that weren’t like them and go to the wilderness to get away from anyone that didn’t live the life they wanted.

    Quakers were cool though.

25. They need to repent and return to the Pope in Rome… duh.

    But seriously, they suck. Not only were they offshoots of shitty Calvinist iconoclasts, they executed a bunch of women as witches, and persecuted Roger Williams so much he had to flee in the night and found his own colony based on religious freedom to get away from their oppressive douchebaggery.

    Those miserable bastards even hated Christmas because it was too popish and no day could be holy but the Sabbath.

    The only consolation is that the Puritan Fathers are probably spinning in their graves watching how Catholic Massachusetts became.

    So the puritans get a solid 1.5/10 but only because their weirdo witch finding books are almost comically bizarre.

26. In school we learned they wanted religious freedom. In reality they wanted land and had no problem creating the Salem witch trials to steal other people’s land.

27. There’s a cultural legacy of the puritans that help catalyze public education, abolition, and progressive politics. The word “secular puritanicalism” has been used to described those who constantly want to improve the world, even to the excess of appearing overly moralizing. This isn’t coincidental either. It was tied to their particular flavor of theology.

    The puritans also left us with the “protestant work ethic” which I don’t think is so great. Certainly, their view of the world probably influenced manifest destiny as much as it did the cause of abolition. So… they left with a legacy of both some good and some bad.

28. I learned in PA public school that the puritans and the pilgrims sailed on the Mayflower to escape religious persecution from the evil English kings, and that they befriended an Amerindian by the name of Squanto, and that the first Thanksgiving was totally one of peaceful celebrations of amicable relations between colonists and natives.

    Of course, I later learned that the “history” I learned was a very whitewashed myth, but I think most Americans probably either actively believe the myth as being a part of the American pseudo-historical cannon, or passively lean into that myth (as it is a nice story) while when pushed, they might recognize that the historical accuracy of that myth may be shaky at best.

    I personally see the pilgrims and puritans as a bunch of cultists who participated in the conquests (and maybe genocide) of the native tribes and their lands. I do recognize that some of the democratic traditions that rose from there were one instrumental piece of the American tradition of democracy, but I wouldn’t put it as far as the traditional lore and to say that it was the only or even the majority originator of our democracy. Overall, they are not people I would necessarily hold up as absolute heroes in my rendition of the American mythos, but I don’t think I would make them out to be the worst villains we’ve had in our history either.

29. Pretty sure a lot of our current problems date back to those religious zealots

30. Not religious enough.

    Nah you can’t judge them by modern standards and even trying too is dishonest. Reference Haidt’s “righteous mind” and and then apply his theory historically.

    You have to remember the social conditions that resulted in Puritanism is a particularly harsh response to fear of disease. In a society without condoms . . . Or antibiotics . . . Or a concept of germ theory. The flu could kill and gangrene cost limbs at minimum.

31. After visiting Greenwich in the UK and hearing why they left/thrown out….. they shouldn’t be romanticized. They were religious extremists even for CofE folks.

32. I’m vaguely annoyed at them because of how many people seem to think they were the first settlers.

    Otherwise, they did some really good things and some really terrible things, just like pretty much everyone alive at that time.