Mourt's Relation

Image:Plimoth Plantation 2002.JPG in Plymouth, Massachusetts]]

It was written primarily by Edward Winslow, although William Bradford appears to have written most of the first section. The book describes their relations with the surrounding Native Americans, up to what is commonly called the first Thanksgiving and the arrival of the ship Fortune in November 1621. Mourt's Relation was first published and sold by John Bellamy in London in 1622. The tract has sometimes been erroneously cited as "by George Morton, sometimes called George Mourt",{{Cite Appletons'|wstitle=Morton, George|year=1900}} which led to its title, Mourt's Relation.

Morton was a Puritan Separatist who had moved to Leiden, Holland. He stayed behind when the first settlers left for Plymouth, Massachusetts,[http://www.sail1620.org/discover_biography_the_carpenter_sisters_of_leiden.shtml The Carpenter Sisters of Leiden, Robert Jennings Heinsohn, Ph.D., sail1620.org] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040416032122/http://www.sail1620.org/discover_biography_the_carpenter_sisters_of_leiden.shtml |date=2004-04-16 }} 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.[https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1898/08/20/102120887.pdf Nathaniel Morton and His Book, Mrs. Morris P. Ferris, The New York Times, August 13, 1898] 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 son Nathaniel Morton became the clerk of Plymouth Colony, a close adviser to his uncle Governor William 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."[https://archive.org/details/newenglandsmemo02winsgoog New-England's Memorial, Nathaniel Morton, Secretary to the Court for the Jurisdiction of New-Plimouth, Congregational Board of Publications, Boston, 1855]

A sixty-year long tradition at The Wall Street Journal is to reprint the section on the "first Thanksgiving" on the Wednesday before the holiday.The Wall Street Journal section on the "first Thanksgiving" https://currentpub.com/2021/11/24/the-wall-street-journal-will-run-its-traditional-thanksgiving-editorials/

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, editor Alexander Young was the first person to identify the 1621 feast as "the first Thanksgiving."{{cite book|last=Baker|first=James W.|title=Thanksgiving: The Biography of an American Holiday|year=2009|publisher=UPNE|isbn=9781584658016|pages=273|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yoMhqK9Z5HwC&q=mort%27s+relation}}

In 1921, a copy sold at auction for $3,800.{{cite news |title=Plymouth Colony Book Brings $3,800 |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1921/01/25/103538665.pdf |access-date=25 January 2021 |work=The New York Times |volume=LXX|issue=23,012 |date=25 January 1921}}

{{reflist}}

• {{cite book | author = William Bradford, Edward Winslow | title = Mourt's Relation, or Journal of the Plantation at Plymouth | publisher = J. K. Wiggin | location = Boston | year = 1865 | url = https://archive.org/details/mourtsrelationo00dextgoog | access-date = 2008-12-23}} Reprint of the original version.

• [http://www.histarch.uiuc.edu/plymouth/mourt1.html Mourt's Relation] as transcribed by Caleb Johnson
• [http://mayflowerhistory.com/s/MourtsRelation.pdf Mourt's Relation] as transcribed by Caleb Johnson (PDF)
• A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth; Mourt's Relation as edited by Dwight B. Heath, at Project Gutenberg
• [http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001261966 Mourt's relation or journal of the plantation at Plymouth] Full-text copies from HathiTrust
• Facsimile of A Relation or Journal of the beginning and proceedings of the English Plantation settled at Plymouth in New England aka Mourt's Relation (London, 1622) at The Internet Archive

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Category:1622 books

Category:1820 archaeological discoveries

Category:History of the Thirteen Colonies

Category:Plymouth Colony

Category:Thanksgiving

Category:Tracts (literature)

Category:Books about Massachusetts