SETTLING NORTH AMERICA 1497 1732
MAYFLOWER COMPACT DEFINITION SUMMARY HISTORY
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Question
[CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
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There weren’t any women on the Mayflower.
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The women created their own government document.
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Women had very few rights at that time.
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The women didn’t agree with the document, so they wouldn’t sign.
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Detailed explanation-1: -Nine adult males on board did not sign the document; some had been hired as seamen only for one year and others may have been too ill to write. No women signed it, in accordance with cultural and legal custom of the times.
Detailed explanation-2: -Forty-one men signed the Mayflower Compact, as it is called: nine adult men on the ship did not. These nine absent signatures would include the seamen and anyone too ill to sign. No women signed the document.
Detailed explanation-3: -Eighteen adult women boarded the Mayflower at Plymouth, with three of them at least six months pregnant. They were Susanna White, Mary Allerton and Elizabeth Hopkins who braved the stormy Atlantic knowing that they would give birth either at sea in desperate conditions or in their hoped destination of America.
Detailed explanation-4: -Only four women settlers were at the first Thanksgiving feast. Pilgrim men believed women had a “weaker body” and that the voyage across the ocean would be too much to bear. So many Pilgrims left their wives and families behind in hopes that they would join them later, once things were more settled.