Death in Plymouth Colony

Designed by

Mr. d'Entremont
gdentremont@reading.k12.ma.us

Introduction | Task | Process | Evaluation | Conclusion | Credits

Introduction

Part of life is dying, and during the days of the Plymouth Colony (1600s) here in Massachusetts, death usually came at a young age.  Life was hard, laborious, and exceedingly demanding. There were no TVs, no I-Pods, X-boxes, and certainly no internet to surf the world-wide web.  The only surf was located a few hundred yards away along the beach in Plymouth Bay.  Most people of Plymouth Colony, and even today, draft what is called a will.  A will is a legally enforceable declaration of how a person wishes his or her property to be distributed after death. Also, after someone dies, a "probate inventory" may be drafted.  A "probate inventory" is a kind of check list of all the items that the deceased person owned.  My chief objective for this activity is for the student to understand, through primary sources in the forms of wills and probates, what the people of Plymouth Colony valued and why they cherished these items. Taking this one step further, what items do you value in your own life today and why?

Using primary sources, each student will investigate and analyze what the settlers of the Plymouth Colony valued in their lives and why. Continuing on with this theme, each student will articulate their personal insight into what items they deem significant in their own lives and why?

Please following the following steps carefully:

• Plymouth History
• Plimouth Plantation - click on the left column
• Mayflower Video Clip - YouTube
  
• Basic History of the Pilgrims

• Wills: Scroll down to the bottom, find your colonist and click on him/her.  Read through very carefully your colonist's will.  It is written in the old English style and also they were not very good at spelling.  It would be another 100 years until a dictionary would be available.  Once you have read over your colonist's will, print it and fill out this Will Activity Sheet.

• "Probate Inventory": Scroll down to the bottom, find your colonist and click on him/her.  Read through very carefully your colonist's "probate inventory".  Once again, it is written in the old English style and also they were not very good at spelling.  Once you have read over your colonist's "probate inventory", print it  and fill out this "Probate Inventory" Activity Sheet.

5). Once you have completed both of the Activity Sheets bring them into class for a Group Discussion Format worth 10 points.

This primary source activity is worth a total of 30 points. The breakdown of the points is as follow:

10 points = Full completion of the "Will Activity Sheet"
10 Points = Full completion of the "'Probate Inventory' Activity Sheet"
10 Points = Group Discussion  (see Group Discussion Format above)

Conclusion

One of the best ways in which students of history can comprehend what life was like during a certain time period is to immerse oneself into primary sources.  Wills and probate records are a fantastic way of discovering what people valued and why they valued these items.  What items do you value and why?

Photo of Miles Standish grave: Created and maintained by Chris Fennell Department of Anthropology, University of Virginia http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/PLYMOUTH/addison-040.GIF