Someone once told me that the pilgrims who ended up in what is now Massachusetts weren’t the only ones that left England and Holland around that time. Supposedly, some pilgrims went to the Caribbean, and settled there (on San Andres island). I spent nearly an hour in the library trying to verify this, to no avail.
Does anyone know about this? In particular, I’d like to know what happened to these pilgrims, and why don’t we ever hear about them, if indeed this account is true.
I have not encountered any information about them, but I suspect that you will have better luck searching for them under the name Separatists. “Pilgrim” was a word that tended to be attached to the Plymouth settlers years after the fact. (They may have used the word, themselves, but even if so, it was pretty well associated with the journey to Plymouth and not to the religious group.)
(You would not, by any chance, have gotten a confused report regarding the original charter for the Pilgrims? They had a charter to settle in Virginia, then made a “navigational error” that put them off the coast of Cape Cod–conveniently distant from the Virginia settlements that were dominated by members of the Church of England (from whom they were separating)–and decided that one plot of distant land was as good as another (as long as they were not under the thumb of the king or the church).)
That’s correct, but I think you mean Andros Island, in the Bahamas. The Company of Eleutherian Adventurers settled there in 1648.
Memories of reading a book which talked of a colony in the Caribbean peopled by pilgrims. Will Google and check through books.
The colony was, I think, New Providence- can’t locate which book mentioned it but it suddenly came to mind.
Not New Providence, but Providence Island:
Providence Island, 1630–1641
The Other Puritan Colony
Karen Ordahl Kupperman
University of Connecticut
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Hardback
(ISBN-13: 9780521352055 | ISBN-10: 0521352053)
* Also available in Paperback
* Published October 1993 | 409 pages | 234 x 156 mm
Temporarily unavailable - no date available
$80.00 (C)
Providence Island was founded in 1630 at the same time as Massachusetts Bay by English puritans who thought an island off the coast of Nicaragua was far more promising than the cold, rocky shores of New England. Although they expected theirs to become a model godly society, the settlement never succeeded in building the kind of united and orderly community that the New Englanders created. In fact, they began large-scale use of slaves, and plunged into the privateering that invited the colony’s extinction by the Spanish in 1641. As a well-planned and well-financed failure, Providence Island offers historians a standard by which to judge other colonies. By examining the failure of Providence Island, the author illuminates the common characteristics in all the successful English settlements, the key institutions without which men and women would not emigrate and a colony’s economy could not thrive. This study of Providence Island reveals the remarkable similarities in many basic institutions among the early colonial regions.
Contents
the Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association
Reviews
“Kupperman’s examination of Providence Island thus presents an unusual and hitherto largely hidden case in the wide-ranging experimentation of the English in the early settlement of the Americas. It will contribute to fresh assessments of Puritanism, slavery and the burgeoning market economy, and the English political situation to the process. This is a model work of scholarship built not only on wide ranging primary sources but also a sure and unpretentious grasp of a number of specialized secondary literatures.” American Historical Review
“Kupperman’s study sparkles in its attention to the comparative aspects of colonization and to the context of English political, religious, economic, and diplomatic circumstances that shaped patterns of colonial life in the West Indies. … In resurrecting the story and articulating the significance of Providence Island, Kupperman has crafted a richly contextualized and noteworthy study for those interested in Puritanism and English colonization in the Atlantic.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History
“…well written, both scholarly and readable…This excellent book will give you a new slant on early colonial history.” Stephanie Martin, Wilson Library Bulletin
“[A] pioneering and energetic book…This is a marvelous work, an example of the study of great ideas and processes in a very small place. For this reason, if no other, Providence Island should be read with widened eyes by those in search either of West Indianness or of New England exceptionalism.” Hilary McD. Beckles, William and Mary Quarterly
“Kupperman has effectively rescued Providence Island from obscurity and used its story to shed new light on the process of English colonization that we thought we knew so well.” Virginia deJohn Anderson, The Journal of American History
“This is an extremely interesting and frequently thought-provoking book, and it is as revealing about English society on the eve of its Civil War as it is about the assumptions and circumstances of English colonization.” Helena M. Wall, Reviews in American History
“…this account of Providence Island makes a valuable correction to the course of colonial history – one that no historian of seventeenth-century America or England can afford to ignore.” Virginia Bernhard, The Journal of Southern History
Yes, I know they’re the same Colombian “state.”
Is this your summary, or that of the author?
That is, can you tell what became of these people, so I don’t have to buy the book?
That is from the publishers’s page on the link given.
You can read the introduction here:
click on the book cover icon.
Providence island is off Nicaragua, whereas New Providence is part of the Bahamas.
I haven’t read the book, but saw it referenced in a book abouth the Plymouth Colony and marked it down as a book to read in future.
No more information I’m afraid.
Wikipedia on
Providence Island Company
And on founding members
Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick
and
John Pym
It is notable (to me, at least) that the Providence Island project was undertaken by Puritans (not the Separatists who were named Pilgrims) at a time when the Puritans were in political ascendance in Britain. Thus, they were much less concerned with “religious liberty” (of which they already had a fair measure) and much more interested in securing funds with which to oppose the king (hence their interest in piracy/privateering).
The Encyclopædia Britannica’s reference to the previously mentioned Eleutherian Adventurers mentions a religious dispute in Bermuda that led to that 1648 settlement. I have not found any information on that issue, yet, but, again, by 1646 Charles I was under arrest and the Puritans were in the ascendance, making a claim by Puritans that they were fleeing persecution a bit odd. (Of course, Bermuda might have been a stronghold of High Church authority away from Britain, leading to dissatisfaction among the seventy or so people who fled to the Bahamas.)
That appears to have been the case. According to The Story of the Bahamas by Paul Albury,
Albury then relates how one of the Independents traveled to England, and because Parliament was gaining the ascendancy, “he could sense that those in Bermuda would soon gain that freedom for which he had come to plead”. Nevertheless, he still decided that “the time was most opportune to advance his plan for colonizing the Bahamas”.
That isn’t entirely clear. It sounds as if the Adventurers were first seeking relief from religious persecution, but when it appeared it would be forthcoming, decided to go ahead with the Bahamas colonization anyway. Perhaps they wanted a more secure home in case the fortunes of war changed, or perhaps they went ahead in hope of financial gain.
The Eleutherian settlement never prospered but did survive to become the nucleus of the British Bahamas.
When I read the thread title, I immediately thought, hmmmm,
Pilgrims of the Caribbean
And then it seems that wasn’t far off the mark…
Although, as it turns out, it was Puritans (not Pilgrims) in the Caribbean. The Pilgrims were a much nicer bunch of people than the Puritans.
(Thank heavens it was not Penguins of the Caribbean.)
Given that two of the main characters are Jack Sparrow and Elizabeth Swann, I can see that this idea has wings. 
I’m trying to avoid paying 21 British Pounds (that can’t be cheap). This introduction is intriguing, but devoid of the details I was looking for.
It says they started to have slaves, and hints that that is why they didn’t “succeed” as the folks in Massachusettes did. Why exactly did the use of slaves end up in turning over the island to the Spanish?
About $40.
Providence Island Company
The Providence Island Company, which functioned from 1630 to 1641, was incorporated for the purpose of colonizing the Caribbean islands of Providence, Henrietta, and Association. Although profit was the main objective of the company’s wealthy promoters, they were also interested in founding a colony for Puritans. From the outset the undertaking foundered. Soil and climate were unfavorable, and the location of the colony in the heart of Spanish territory was a constant source of danger. To attract settlers, the company’s promoters tried to divert to Providence Island English Puritans planning to go to New England; they even encouraged disillusioned New England Puritans to migrate. A group headed by John Humphry left Massachusetts in 1641 to settle in Providence, but en route it was conquered by a Spanish expedition.
http://www.johnhampden.org/The%20Patriot/42_5.pdf
During their brief decade on Providence
Island the settlers were assailed, according
to Wedgwood, by a multitude of prob-
lems. The might of the Spanish Empire
proved an ever present threat, African
slaves imported to work the land grew
mutinous, a plague of rats swept the Island
and the tobacco and cotton crops failed.
The idealistic Puritan shareholders then
turned to licensing pirate captains in ex-
change for a share of the loot.
http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/p7610.html
The source of the institutional divergence among the colonies of the New World appears to be their initial factor endowments, more than the distinct cultures or colonial policies of the European states that conquered them. British Belize and Guyana went the way of Spanish Honduras and Colombia; Barbados and Jamaica went the way of Cuba and Haiti. The Puritans who settled Providence Island off the coast of Nicaragua forsook their political ideals and became slave owners. Slaves on the island outnumbered the Puritans when it was overrun by the Spanish in 1641. According to its leading historian, “[T]he puritan settlement . . . with its economy fueled by privateering and slavery looked much like any other West Indian colony” (Kupperman 1993, p. 2). At the time of its demise, Providence Island was attracting migrants from the more famous Puritan colony far to the north; two boatloads of hapless Pilgrims arrived from Massachusetts just after the Spanish takeover.
I wonder what kind of a Thanksgiving they had.
Anyway, thanks for the info.
I have read Kupperman’s book.
Just to be clear, what the OP was referring to was indeed Providence Island. San Andreas Island - which they called Henrietta Island - was an even less successful outpost of the main Providence Island colony.
That’s just a badly worded blurb. It was because they turned to privateering (or ‘plunged into’ it, as the blurb weirdly puts it) that the Spanish got round to doing something about them. But Kupperman’s point is that they were failing anyway. But not because they were using slaves. That was a symptom, not the cause, of their problems, which had more to do with land tenures and the way in which the colony was managed.
The Spanish expelled all the colonists and shipped them to Cadiz. Some then returned to England, while others ended up in the other English colonies in the New World. The slaves were confiscated and sold in New Granada.
Would you recommend Kupperman’s book. I ahve had it on by ‘buy sometime’ list for three or four years.
Did you feel that it extended your understanding of the Pilgrims and their methods, and separately of the difficulties of establishing colonies in the New World?
Yes, if you want a thorough, rather dry, academic monograph on the subject. The Providence Island colony is far less well-documented than the others, so she has less to work with, but her great strength is that she can put what little she has into the wider contexts. It’s not exactly a pacy read.