Most people think of the Pilgrims as the group who stepped off the Mayflower in 1620 and immediately settled at Plymouth Rock. The reality is far messier and more interesting. These people didn’t call themselves Pilgrims at all. They were English separatists, religious dissenters who believed the Church of England was too corrupt to reform from within, so they had to leave it entirely.
The group started in Scrooby, England, in the early 1600s under the leadership of William Brewster and William Bradford. King James I had no tolerance for separatists, so they fled to Leiden, Holland, around 1608. They lived there for over a decade, working as laborers, weavers, and tradespeople. Life in Holland offered religious freedom but came with its own struggles: poverty, hard labor, and the growing concern that their children were becoming “too Dutch” and losing their English identity.
This Dutch period shaped who they became. While in Leiden, they established their own church, developed stronger community bonds, and learned to survive outside their homeland. When they finally decided to cross the Atlantic in 1620, they weren’t fleeing Holland in desperation. They were making a calculated choice to build a new society where they could practice their faith freely and maintain their cultural identity simultaneously.
Understanding this backstory helps third grade history students grasp that historical figures had complex lives before the famous moments we remember. When learning about the Pilgrims, it’s worth exploring what pushed them to leave England and what they gained from their time in the Netherlands. The Pilgrims history worksheets can help students organize these earlier chapters of their journey, while finding the problem and solution with question words encourages deeper thinking about why they made each decision along the way.