author

Emmanuel Altham

1600–1635

Best known for lively letters from early Plymouth Colony, this English merchant adventurer left behind rare eyewitness accounts of New England in the 1620s. His writing stands out for its directness, curiosity, and the everyday detail it preserves.

1 Audiobook

Three Visitors to Early Plymouth Letters about the Pilgrim settlement in New England during its first seven years

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 in Essex around 1600, he came from a gentry family with ties to commerce and was connected to the Plymouth venture as a merchant adventurer and investor. In 1623 he sailed to New England as the nominal captain of the Little James, one of the ships sent to support Plymouth Colony.

Altham is remembered mainly for the letters he wrote from New England to his brother Sir Edward Altham and to James Sherley. Those letters, later collected in Three Visitors to Early Plymouth, are valued because they offer an outsider's view of the young colony—its resources, trade hopes, hardships, and daily life—during its first years.

Surviving manuscript evidence also shows that more of his correspondence was preserved than is usually reprinted, including a 1625 letter now cataloged by the Morgan Library & Museum. Sources consulted here identify him as having lived from 1600 to 1635 or 1636. No clearly verifiable portrait was found from the pages reviewed, so no profile image is included.