New England Puritans & Pilgrims Primary Sources

Historical documents. What clues can you gather about the time, place, players, and culture?

You can read the last will and testament of seventeenth-century English settlers online.

At the same site, you can scroll down to the other "Selected Wills."

The Mayflower Compact of 1620.

An article on Native Americans in Plymouth Colony criminal cases, 1630-1675, which quotes and cites several primary sources.

Excerpts from William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation: 1620-1647

The proceedings from the First General Assembly of Providence Colony, in 1647, which include provisions against sodomy and buggery.

A Connecticut Colony law prohibiting the sale of guns or ammunition to Indians (1642).

The laws of Plymouth Colony in 1636, including policies on military impressments and marriage.