 | Term | Definition |
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Separatist |
One who secedes or advocates separation, especially from an established church |
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Puritans |
English Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries advocated strict religious discipline |
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Anglicans |
People that practice the faith, doctrine, system, and practice of the Anglican Church. |
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Pilgrims |
The members of the English Separatist Church, a radical faction of Puritanism, composed a third of the 102 colonists who sailed aboard the Mayflower to North America, and they became the dominant group in the colony. |
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Mayflower |
an unremarkable ship of about 180 tons, has been immortalized, since it carried the first Pilgrims to New England and because the Mayflower Compact of 21 November 1620 was agreed on board. |
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Quakers |
A member of the Society of Friends. |
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Mayflower Compact |
the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. It was signed on November 11, 1620 |
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Representative Democracy |
The representatives form an independent ruling body (for an election period) charged with the responsibility of acting in the people's interest, but not as their proxy representatives |
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Autocracy |
Government by a single person having unlimited power; despotism. |
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Theocracy |
A government ruled by or subject to religious authority. |
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Aristocracy |
A hereditary ruling class; nobility. E.G. England |
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Capitalism |
An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market. |
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Communism |
system of government in which the state plans and controls the economy and a single, often authoritarian party holds power, claiming to make progress toward a higher social order in which all goods are equally shared by the people. |
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Blue Law |
A law designed to regulate commercial business on Sunday. |
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William Bradford |
Pennsylvania's attorney general for an eleven-year period, from 1780 to 1791. He entered the judiciary in the latter year and presided as judge of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for three years. |
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Samoset |
Native American leader and friend of the early colonists. He was the first to sell land to the Pilgrims (1625). |
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Squanto |
Remembered as the interpreter, guide, and agricultural advisor who shepherded the Pilgrim settlers of Plymouth Colony through their precarious early existence in the New World and did more than anyone else to secure the survival of the settlement. |
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Massasoit |
American Indian chief. He was the grand sachem (intertribal chief) of the Wampanoag Indians. In 1623 he was nursed back to health from a serious illness by grateful Pilgrims. |
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John Carver |
After the signing of the Mayflower Compact he was elected (1620) governor for one year and was probably responsible for the choice of the site at Plymouth. |
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