Pilgrims, the English settlers who founded Plymouth colony in Massachusetts as the first permanent settlement in New England. The term is generally considered to mean all persons who came to the colony from 1620 to 1630, including the original group that arrived on the Mayflower, and some relatives and associates of the early colonists who did not arrive until after 1630. The total number, by this definition, was about 375 persons. Many of these, perhaps one-fifth, died during the first few winters. Some two or three dozen returned to England or moved to other colonies.
The active leaders of the Plymouth venture were members of an English Separatist congregation that had been living in Leiden, Holland. A group of London merchant adventurers (businessmen specializing in foreign trade) financed the early voyages, recruiting additional colonists in London Although the Leiden Separatists were in the minority in the four ships that arrived at Plymouth 1620–23, they completely dominated the colony, and succeeded in converting most of the other settlers to their religious beliefs.
The Plymouth settlers did not call themselves Pilgrims. Sometimes members of the church referred to themselves as “saints” (they were expected to be saintly in moral conduct). William Bradford in his History of Plymouth Plantation told of their sorrow at leaving Leiden, and remarked, “but they knew they were pilgrims.” At a Forefathers' Day celebration in Plymouth in 1793 the Reverend Chandler Robbins, familiar with the Bradford account, referred in a sermon to the settlers as “the Pilgrims," and by mid-19th century the term was in common use.
