The bookletMourt's Relation (full title:A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Settled at Plimoth in New England) was written between November 1620 and November 1621, and describes in detail what happened from the landing of theMayflowerPilgrims onCape Cod inProvincetown Harbor through their exploring and eventual settling ofPlymouth Colony.
It was written primarily byEdward Winslow, althoughWilliam Bradford appears to have written most of the first section. The book describes their relations with the surroundingNative Americans, up to what is commonly called the firstThanksgiving and the arrival of the shipFortune in November 1621.Mourt's Relation was first published and sold byJohn Bellamy inLondon in 1622. Thetract has sometimes been erroneously cited as "byGeorge Morton, sometimes called George Mourt",[1] which led to its title,Mourt's Relation.
Morton was aPuritanSeparatist who had moved toLeiden, Holland. He stayed behind when the first settlers left forPlymouth, Massachusetts,[2] but he continued to orchestrate business affairs in Europe and London for their cause—presumably arranging for the publication of and perhaps helping write Mourt's Relation.[3] In 1623, Morton himself emigrated to the Plymouth Colony with his wife Juliana, the sister of Governor William Bradford's wife Alice. George Morton would not survive long in the New World, dying the following year in 1624.
George Morton's sonNathaniel Morton became the clerk of Plymouth Colony, a close adviser to his uncle GovernorWilliam Bradford who raised him after the death of his father, and the author of the influential early history of the Plymouth Colony "New England's Memorial."[4]
A sixty-year long tradition atThe Wall Street Journal is to reprint the section on the "first Thanksgiving" on the Wednesday before the holiday.[5]
The booklet was summarized by other publications without the now-familiar Thanksgiving story, but the original booklet appeared to be lost or forgotten by the eighteenth century. A copy was rediscovered in Philadelphia in 1820, with the first full reprinting in 1841. In a footnote, editorAlexander Young was the first person to identify the 1621 feast as "the first Thanksgiving."[6]
In 1921, a copy sold at auction for $3,800.[7]
Mourt's Relation; or Journal of the plantation at Plymouth public domain audiobook atLibriVox