Pilgrim Fathers, the first English colony which settled in Massachusetts (q.v.). The company, numbering one hundred men, women, and children, set sail from Plymouth in the Mayflower on 6th September 1620, bound for the banks of the Hudson; but after a long and stormy voyage they landed (21st Dec.) on the bleak shores of Cape Cod, and founded the settlement of Plymouth (q.v.).
See Deverell's Pilgrims and the Anglican Church (1887); Goodwin's Pilgrim Republic (Boston, 1888); the History of the Plymouth Plantation, reproduced from the MS.—itself restored to the U.S. in 1897—of William Bradford, the pilgrim who became governor of the colony; and books by John Brown (1895) and E. Arber (1897).