A Pilgrim Father’s Village: the Records of Kempsey, Worcestershire
A.F.C. Baber writes that traditions of English local government, carried to the New World, provide an important clue to the success of the Pilgrims' emigration.
The most interesting characteristic of the men and women who sailed in the Mayflower in 1620 is that they were completely undistinguished people—undistinguished in social class, occupation or place of origin. Of those one hundred and two emigrants, twelve were entitled “Master,” but in the early documents none has the appellation of “gentleman three are classed as merchants, and a handful took their own servants with them; for the rest, mention is made of a tailor, a fustian-maker, a wool-comber, a smith, a say-maker, a linen-weaver, a hatter, a cloth-maker, a wood-sawyer, a wool-carder, a silk-worker and a printer.
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