in Massachusetts
, and served as governor for over 30 years after John Carver
died. His journal (1620–1647) was published as Of Plymouth Plantation
. Bradford is credited as the first civil authority to designate what popular American culture now views as Thanksgiving in the United States.
William Bradford was born to William and Alice Bradford in Austerfield
, Yorkshire
, England in 1590.
So they committed themselves to the will of God and resolved to proceed.
Being thus arrived in a good harbor, and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element.
Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness.
The loss of...honest and industrious men's lives cannot be valued at any price.
But it pleased God to visit us then with death daily, and with so general a disease that the living were scarce able to bury the dead.
Cold comfort to fill their hungry bellies.
Behold, now, another providence of God. A ship comes into the harbor.
Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation.