After years of studying and teaching about the Pilgrims, Stauffer and Stone’s expertise runs deep on the subject. Stauffer has led more than 30 trips to Plymouth to study the Pilgrims as part of the third-grade curriculum she taught for many years at Dayspring Christian Academy.

To tell the Pilgrim story, Stone and colleague Mary Stauffer were interviewed. With the preservation of Bradford’s journal, the Pilgrim story can be learned from a first-hand source – from one who lived every minute of their harrowing journey. He wrote it over a number of years, and that’s where we get most of the information on the Pilgrims.”Īt Dayspring Christian Academy, students learn through the Principle Approach method of education to study history from original or primary sources. In class, we also read from (Pilgrim) Edward Winslow, who had several much shorter journals. He was governor of the colony for the first 33 years, and his journal is the primary source for the Pilgrim story. Bradford was probably the Pilgrim of all Pilgrims, if you will. “This ‘book’ is written by William Bradford, and it is his personal journal.

“We have a national treasure, and it is called Of Plimoth Plantation,” said Dayspring Christian Academy Upper School principal Dan Stone, who taught Rudiments of America’s Christian History and Government to ninth-grade students for 15 years and led many trips to study the seeds of our nation’s beginnings in Boston and Plymouth. With history now being rewritten or even erased, it is important to note that the story of the Pilgrims has been preserved in a first-hand account.

Not only did Pilgrim Governor William Bradford risk his life to light the flame of liberty for what would become America, his tombstone issues an indelible reminder to us: “What our fathers with so much difficulty attained, do not basely relinquish.” “In essence, it is a kingdom number representing at least ten generations or eight cycles of the jubilee year of fifty and reveals, over time, the fruit of the ideas embraced by a people that bring either liberty or slavery to a nation,” Bullinger said.2īullinger’s words read as a warning for our country today. Bullinger in his 1921 publication of Number in Scripture: Its Supernatural Design and Spiritual Significance, in the Bible, 400 years is a symbol of expectation and hope. It encouraged them “to become a body politic, administering amoung yourselves civil government” and reminded them that they “are furnished with persons of now special eminence above the rest, from whom you will elect some to the office of government.” In his journal, Bradford says that the passengers chose governors and two or three assistants to take charge of the people on the way. Pilgrim Pastor John Robinson wrote a letter to the Pilgrims that was read to all before their departure.

Where did the pilgrims settled