Yeoman Colonists

The English Separatists finally left Holland for North America, and their boat, The Mayflower, landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620.  Their governor, William Bradford, discusses in his diary, Of Plymouth Plantation, the living conditions in this early colony.  In fact, the colonists first attempted a communistic society, where all property was held in common.  However, this encouraged laziness among the colonists and, as a result, many pilgrims starved.  The plantation was then divided up into private property, with each colonist owning and working his own farm, which greatly increased their productivity.

Similarly, only 8 years later, another fleet of ships began to arrive in Massachusetts.  This was the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which had most of New England under their authority.  Over 20,000 settlers arrived, mostly Puritans, to found their "city on a hill" in the New World.  At least 60% of these settlers made their living directly from the land as farmers, husbandmen, herders, or hunters.  An extremely small percentage of these settlers were any type of nobility.

The overwhelming majority of the early American settlers were small landowners and farmers who had no ties to the noble class.  They were mostly Protestant, due to the influence of Wycliffe and Tyndale and their Bibles, and were known in their homeland by the English class of yeomen.  Such was the effect of the yeoman class emigrating to North America that the American Heritage Dictionary published in 1828 defines the word yeomanry as "the collective body of yeomen or freeholders.  Thus the common people in America are called the yeomanry."