So what do we really know about the history of Thanksgiving? Is it like the Norman Rockwell painting? Or are the images above more of a correct story? Follow along in the next few blogs as I tell the story of my ancestors who came across on "The Mayflower" and created the progeny from which I am issue.
Christianity as we all know follows the book of the Bible. Similarly, the story of Thanksgiving, the history of the Pilgrims and their genealogy follows just one book, "Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation", a journal written by William Bradford, a passenger of The Mayflower and later the Governor of the settlement at Plymouth. He began writing his book in 1630 and completed it just before his death in 1657. The book disappeared during the British evacuation of Boston in 1776. Later to be found in 1856 in the library of the Anglican Bishop of Oxford. William Bradford was born in the farming community of Yorkshire, England in 1588. As a teenager he joined a cult of extreme Protestants known as Separatists. They believed in a purity of Christianity and in so doing had to separate themselves from the Anglican Church of England. The term Puritans has been around since the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in about 1565. The Puritans believed that Queen Elizabeth did not go far enough to abolish the rituals of the Roman Catholics when she established the Protestant Church of England. When King James I began his reign in England he had the Bible translated from Latin to English. This is where the King James version of the Bible got its name. King James I called Puritans, "a pest, a fanatic, and a hypocrite, worse than a cattle thief."
The Puritans mainly read and studied the letters of Saint Paul who as we know was also in a shipwreck back in 60 AD on the island of Malta. They also read the Acts of the Apostles, the book of Genesis and Psalms. These stories of the early church they believed were the most authentic form of Christianity. They were also Calvinists. As they also followed the beliefs of the French Reformer John Calvin. Today the belief that Calvin bestowed that the human race should be divided in two, those selected to go to heaven and those who will go to hell is still very strong. The Puritans argued that the Church of England was beyond redemption because of its Roman Catholic past. They wished to create a membership that was pure from the influence of Rome. In 1593, Parliament and Queen Elizabeth made Separatism a crime. And thus our journey begins.
