Bradford, William

William (1590-1657), a prominent Pilgrim father. He was born in Yorkshire, England, 1590, and died at Plymouth, May 9, 1657. He was one of the original company that set sail on the Mayflower. He signed the famous compact made in its cabin. After Carver's death Bradford was elected governor of the colony, a position which he filled with the exception of a short interval until the time of his death. He was a man of native dignity and ability. In 1622 Canonicus, the sachem of the Narragansetts, sent him a bundle of arrows tied with the skin of a snake. Bradford, nothing daunted, stuffed the skin with powder and bullets and sent it back again. He wrote a History of the Plymouth Plantation from the formation of the organization in 1602 to 1647. The manuscript was discovered in England in 1858, and in 1898 it was presented to the state of Massachusetts, where it rests among the valued archives of the commonwealth. It has been suggested that the family name has been derived from the city of Bradford in Yorkshire, now a prosperous manufacturing city of 280,000 people. See Plymouth