Pilgrim Fathers are the earliest migrants to

Pilgrim Fathers are the earliest migrants to North America. Pilgrim Fathers, in American colonial history, settlers of Plymouth, Mass., the first permanent colony in New England (1620). Of the 102 colonists, 35 were members of the English Separatist Church (a radical faction of Puritanism) who had earlier fled to Leiden, the Netherlands, to escape persecution at home.