The Mayflower Compact was the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. It was written by separatist Congregationalists who called themselves "Saints". Later they were referred to as Pilgrims or Pilgrim Fathers.

The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. The trials resulted in the executions of twenty people, most of them women

The episode is one of the nation's most notorious cases of mass hysteria, and has been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolationism, religious extremism, false accusations and lapses in due process

ubjects of will and work, the relationship between humans and nature, and the differences between European and Native American cultures. In this same century, Puritans such as Anne Bradstreet and John Winthrop wrote about their spiritual feelings and quests, Bradstreet in very personal poems and a journal, Winthrop in both a famous public sermon and an intimate journal. This tradition continued into the following century, when Puritan Jonathan Edwards and non-Puritans such as Phillis Wheatley and John Woolman reflected on their faith in poems and journals. Other writers, including Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, produced more public literature designed to entertain people or further their political aims. In its emphasis on human potential and reason, much of this literature reflects the prevailing sentiments of its era, often called the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason.

Only literary forms found in the Bible were acceptable and all forms of fiction was despised.

The explorers were navigators and explorers, not writers.
Fliers and pamphlets-promotion of the new life across the sea
Religion books-King James Bible published in 1611
Newspapers
Journals & diaries-settlers and explorers kept records of their adventures
Letters-Colonists kept in touch with Europe

Writing is practical
Writers are amateurs
Writing is instructive
Plain Style– simple, direct

She suffered a number of personal hardships and illnesses in her life:
Smallpox – twice.
Her sister was excommunicated from the church.
Her house burned down, costing her family all of its worldly possessions.
Dorothy, her daughter, died.
Tuberculosis – eventually killed her in 1672