Plymouth, 1625

For this Time Machine, each student is assigned an actual person who lived in Massachusetts with the first pilgrims. 

Governor Bradford

Alice Southworth Bradford

Squanto

Hobomok

Corbitant

Samoset

Massasoit

Miles Standish

John Alden

Priscilla Alden

Stephen Hopkins

Elizabeth Hopkins

Edward Winslow

John Howland

John Billington

Eleanor Billington

John Newcomen

Thomas Morton

David Thompson (New Hampshire settler)

Christopher Jones

William Brewster

Dr. Samuel Fuller

The instructor may portray an old friend from Holland who is investigating whether America may be a good place for his people to come.

During the class period, each student should tell their stories, express their perspective, and answer questions, such as:

1. Who is your king this year?

2. What are your aspirations? Why?

3. What are your greatest worries? Why?

4. What is your favorite thing to do? Why?

5. Who do you fear? Why?

6.  What is your opinion of relations between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag?

7.  What are some of your religious beliefs?

8. Tell a short story about yourself.

9. What is your opinion of Jamestown?

10. Will you welcome the Dutch?

Appropriate answers to the above questions might be:

1. King James I has just died, his son, Charles I has just taken the throne.

2. Our hopes are to establish a New Promised Land here in the wilderness of America, where we can worship according to our own beliefs, raise families, and live happy, fruitful, and pious lives.

3. We are mostly worried about survival. Winters are very difficult. Natives are a daily concern. Food supplies are unpredictable. We worry also about spiritual attacks on our project.

4. Our greatest contentment comes from our worshipping together. We sing psalms, we pray together, and we listen to sermons. We also take great joy in our vocations: we farm, we build, we hunt.

5. We are apprehensive about the Indians, although several have become our friends, we have been at war with the Spaniards, and, unfortunately, some of the King’s own prelates.

6. See #5

7. Predestination, Psalm singing, Chain of Being, Evangelism, Soli Deo Gloriam, Sola Gratia

8. Use the links provided

9. Despicable. They are not true Christians. Greedy. Few women. Cannibals. Gentry.

10. Cautiously.

THIS VIDEO, which takes you to the Time Machine Museum, Plimoth Plantation, shows how living history is done AT ITS BEST!