In September 1620, an aged sailing ship named the Mayflower set out from England bound for the New World. On board was a small but determined band of men, women, and children known today as the Pilgrims. After a perilous, two-month voyage, the Pilgrims finally landed at Plymouth, in the region of North America called New England. There they immediately started work on the task that had brought them three thousand miles from their homeland. They began to build a new society, a society founded on their Puritan ideals. Puritanism was a religious movement that stressed personal faith and living according to scriptural standards over church ritual, and the individual congregation over bishops and other church officials.

A decade after the Pilgrims stepped ashore at Plymouth, a larger and betterfinanced group of Puritans departed the British Isles for New England under...