Question Home

Position:Home>Genealogy> What's the difference between Pilgrims and Puritans?


Question:In researching my family history, I found out that one branch of my family is descended from Puritans who settled in Massachusetts in 1632. Were Pilgrims also Puritans or where they separate groups of people? I'm Canadian so I'm fairly clueless about this part of American history.


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: In researching my family history, I found out that one branch of my family is descended from Puritans who settled in Massachusetts in 1632. Were Pilgrims also Puritans or where they separate groups of people? I'm Canadian so I'm fairly clueless about this part of American history.

Puritans and Pilgrims are not the same thing and it is a bit complicated to explain. It has to do with their beliefs in separating or not separating from the Anglican Church in England. Both Pilgrims and Puritans came to the new land of America seeking religious freedom, but how and why they came are very different.

Pilgrims wanted to separate from the Church of England (Anglican Church). Pilgrims landed at Plymouth in 1620 and it is they who survived to celebrate the first Thanksgiving. They wore bright clothing and sang a lot.

Most Puritans did not want to separate from the Church of England, they wanted to reform it. However, many Puritans came to North America in the 1620–1640s because they believed that the Church of England was beyond reform. They continued to profess their allegiance to the Church of England despite their dissent from Church leadership and practices. Puritans were very conservative in dress and manner - it is they who lend their name to concepts like "puritanical behavior."

Wikipedia does a pretty good job of sorting it all out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrims

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritans

they're somewhat same at a point..

The most obvious difference between the Pilgrims and the Puritans is that the Puritans had no intention of breaking with the Anglican church. The Puritans were nonconformists as were the Pilgrims, both of which refusing to accept an authority beyond that of the revealed word. But where with the Pilgrims this had translated into something closer to an egalitarian mode, the P

Most pilgrims were pretty puritanical.
Perhaps your family even may have been of pirate descent? hey, you never know.

I believe they are the same. The pilgrims migrated to the US to get away from Religous segregation from the church of England. When they got here I believe they called themselves the "Puritans".

If I am not mistaken - and I could very well be - Pilgrims refers to all of the Western European groups that settled in what was/is called New England: states along the north Atlantic seaboard: Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, etc.

The Puritans I believe settled primarily in Massachusetts: the Boston Brahmans?

Could be wrong.

Wotan

To my own understanding, PILGRIMS are people who travels to a holy land or place for religious reasons and go back to their various home after they have performed the pilgrimage. Like the Muslim all over the world travels to Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia to perform pilgrimage every year.
While, PURITANS are people who has very strict moral attitudes and the also thinks that, pleasure and materials things are bad and the can corrupt the human mine. The Puritans worship God in a simple way.
From the above, I can say that it is not all Pilgrims that are Puritans. But some Puritans can be Pilgrims by performing pilgrimage to the Holy land, so therefore Pilgrims and Puritans are two different things all together.
PRINCE SADIQ