NitaKeepUp

Did you know Plymouth was not the first English colony in New England?  Me neither.  Apparently it was Fort St. George in Maine.  I just started reading A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz.  Horwitz mentions the fact that 128 years passes between when Columbus “discovered” America and the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, and yet he knows nothing about those years and the years before Columbus.  I thought back to my young school days, and I remember learning about Columbus and the Pilgrims, but nothing really before Columbus or in between the two historical events.  That just seems very wrong to me.

Two interesting facts I have read in this book so far:

The Pilgrims were not the first English to settle Massachusetts.  It was some English settlers who built a fort on the island of Cuttyhunk.  What is even more interesting is the fact that they came to gather sassafras to sell back to Europe, and not to find religious freedom.

Second, half of the what was to become the United States was explored by other Europeans before the English settled at Plymouth.  I had no idea!