author
Emmanuel Altham
1600–1635
A rare eyewitness to the earliest years of Plymouth Colony, his surviving letters bring the settlement to life with plain, vivid detail. They offer a close-up view of daily hardship, local relationships, and the practical world of English colonization in the 1620s.
1 Audiobook
Three Visitors to Early Plymouth Letters about the Pilgrim settlement in New England during its first seven years
by Emmanuel Altham, John Pory, Isaack de Rasieres
About the author
Born around 1600 into the Altham family of Mark Hall in Essex, he is best remembered for a small group of letters rather than for a long list of published books. Those letters survived because they capture firsthand observations of early English expansion, and later editors gathered them into Three Visitors to Early Plymouth.
In 1623, he traveled to New England with the Little James, arriving at Plymouth Colony and writing home about what he saw there. His account describes the settlement's position, its limited livestock and resources, and even Governor William Bradford's wedding feast, which makes his writing especially valuable to readers interested in the everyday texture of colonial life.
He also appears in connection with later travels in the Indian Ocean, and a 1628 letter is often noted for using the word "dodo." Little is securely known about him beyond these scattered records, but the letters that remain have made him an important minor voice in early Atlantic history.