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Journal by William Bradford, leader of the Plymouth Colony

Of Plymouth Plantation is a journal that was written over a period of years by William Bradford, the leader of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. It is regarded as the most authoritative account of the Pilgrims and the early years of the colony which they founded. The journal was written between 1630 and 1651 and describes the story of the Pilgrims from 1608, when they settled in the Dutch Republic on the European mainland through the 1620 Mayflower voyage to the New World, until the year 1647. The book ends with a list of Mayflower passengers and what happened to them which was written in 1651.

The document has carried many names. At the top of the original text is Of Plim̃oth Plantation, but newer prints of the text often use the modern spelling, "Plymouth." The text of Bradford's journal is often called the History of Plymouth Plantation. When Samuel Wilberforce quoted Bradford's work in A History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America in 1844, the document is cited as History of the Plantation of Plymouth. It is also sometimes called William Bradford's Journal. A version published by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (after the return of the manuscript from England in 1897) is titled Bradford's History "Of Plimoth Plantation" while labeled The Bradford History on the spine. It has also been called The Mayflower, although it is not a ship's log and was written after the events. It was primarily a journal of the colonists' first years at Plymouth. The Bradford journal records the events of the first 30 years of Plymouth Colony, as well as the reactions of the colonists to those events, and it is regarded by historians as the preeminent work of 17th century America. It is Bradford's simple yet vivid account that has made the Pilgrims what Samuel Eliot Morison called the "spiritual ancestors of all Americans". Bradford apparently never made an effort to publish the manuscript during his lifetime, but he did intend it to be preserved and read by others. He wrote at the end of chapter 6:
I have been the larger in these things, and so shall crave leave in some like passages following, (though in other things I shall labour to be more contract) that their children may see with what difficulties their fathers wrestled in going through these things in their first beginnings, and how God brought them along notwithstanding all their weaknesses and infirmities. As also that some use may be made hereof in after times by others in such like weighty employments; and herewith I will end this chapter.