• And here one first glimpses, as a sickly and somewhat precocious boy, probably the ablest and certainly the most diversely gifted of the Pilgrim Fathers. Born at Austerfield, a hamlet two miles to the north, just across the River Idle in Yorkshire, William Bradford was the son and namesake of a prosperous yeoman who tilled many broad acres of his own, and others leased from the local gentry and the Crown. His wife was Alice Hanson, daughter of an enterprising local shopkeeper and farmer. Shortly after the birth of his son in 1589, the father died. Three years later the widow remarried and sent her young four-year-old to live with his grandfather, another William Bradford. Upon the latter's death in 1596 and his mother's the following year, the boy was taken in hand by his paternal uncles, Robert and Thomas, “who devoted him, like his ancestors, unto the affairs of husbandry.”2684, p 45

• BRADFORD, WILLIAM - William Bradford was baptized at Austerfield, County York, 19 March 1589/90, the son of William and Alice (Hanson) Bradford (William B. Browne, "Ancestry of the Bradfords of Austerfield, County York - Records Extending the Ancestral Line of Gov. William Bradford," NEHGR 83:439, 84:5). He became an early convert to the Separatist Church at nearby Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, and he left with the church for Holland ca. 1607. Cotton Mather relates that he was living in Holland when he became of full age and sold his lands in England (NEHGR 4:44). He married (1) at Leiden 10 December 1613 Dorothy May, and he listed himself in the marriage intentions as age twenty-three (MD 9:115-17). He married (2) at Plymouth 14 August 1623 Alice (Carpenter) Southworth (MD 30:4). His child by his first wife was John Bradford, who married twice, but left no children. By his second wife, William had William, Mercy, and Joseph Bradford. Mercy married Benjamin Vermayes, and there is no record of any surviving children. Sons William and Joseph both left descendants, and William became a colony leader, often serving as an Assistant. Governor Bradford's noncupative will is given in MD 2:228.2694, pp 249-50

• He went to Holland in 1609, was a citizen of Leyden in 1612, and there on Dec. 9, 1613, was married to Dorothy May, probably a daughter of John and Cornelia (Bowes) May.2763, p 508

• With Carver's death the purple fell upon the ample shoulders of William Bradford, a man now of thirty-two, and with only an occasional break he carried the responsibilities of supreme command for more than thirty years, pulling the Pilgrims through many a tight and apparently hopeless situation by his inexhaustible energy, ready wit, and absolutely indomitable courage.
The choice of Bradford as governor is an important milestone in Pilgrim history in several respects. For one thing, it signalized the fact that a younger generation had been edging slowly toward the front of the stage and was now ready to play a major role. Up to this time affairs had rested largely in the hands of Elder Brewster, Pastor Robinson, Deacon Cushman, and Deacon Carver, all of whom were getting on in years. Now this group was scattered – one was dead, another was in London, a third was in Leyden, and only Brewster was here at Plymouth. When these men spoke, they still commanded great respect and spoke with unchallenged authority. But their function increasingly became that of elder statesmen. The actual conduct of affairs, the day-by-day direction of operations, even important policy decisions, fell more and more to an able and diversely talented group of much younger men – to Governor Bradford, astute and practical, a farsighted organizer and efficient administrator; to Assistant Governor Allerton, a shrewd and sharp trader, who took over the plantation's business dealings; to Captain Myles Standish, the squat and easily kindled “little chimney”; and to young Edward Winslow, just turned twenty-six, a governor in later years but now chiefly employed as an envoy on more delicate diplomatic missions.2684, pp 181-2

• “William Bradford. . . deserves the pre-eminence of being called the father of American history."
Born in Austerfield, Yorkshire, England, he joined the group of Separatists at the age of seventeen. He was only thirty-two when he came to Plymouth with the Mayflower Pilgrims. From 1621 to 1657, a period of thirty-six years, he was annually elected Governor of the Colony (but for five occasions when he “importunity got off.”)
From 1630 to 1650, in spare time, he wrote the famous History of Plimouth Plantation. Nathaniel Morton, Bradford's nephew, used this book in compiling New Englands Memoriall, published in 1669. Later, Thomas Prince used it in his Chronological History of New England. Prince left the Bradford manuscript in his library in the tower of Old South Church, on Washington Street, Boston, where Thomas Hutchinson referred to it for his History of Massachusetts Bay. For eighty years (1775 to 1885) the manuscript was lost, until finally discovered in the Fulham Library of the Bishop of London. It is now in a glass case at the State Library, State House, in Boston, Massachusetts.2759, p 4

• Without his Of Plymouth Plantation, certainly the greatest book written in seventeenth-century America, there would be almost no information about the voyage with which it all began.2697, p 7

• Late in life Bradford looked back on the manuscript pages of his history of the colony. Beside a copy of a letter written by Pastor Robinson and Elder Brewster back in 1617, in which they referred to their congregation’s “most strict and sacred bond,” Bradford wrote, “I have been happy in my first times, to see, and with much comfort to enjoy, the blessed fruits of this sweet communion, but it is now a part of my misery in old age, to find and feel the decay, and...with grief and sorrow of heart to lament and bewail the same.”2697, p 187

• See map for location of Austerfield.2764

• A diary kept of the Mayflower’s voyage and printed in 1622 confirms that beer was on board and tells us why the Pilgrims decided to land at Plymouth Rock. An entry dated December 19, 1620, reads: “For we could not now take time for further search of consideration: ‘our victuals being much spent, especially our beere…” A copy of the original edition of this diary may be seen in the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C.2765