Doomed to Fail - Ep 14 - Part 2: Big Trouble in Little Plymoth - William Bradford & Thomas Morton

Episode Date: February 3, 2024

Join us on a fascinating journey back in time as we dive deep into the lives of two intriguing figures - William Bradford and Thomas Morton. 🕰️ Explore the contrasting perspectives that shaped early American history. 🇺🇸 From Bradford's leadership in Plymouth Colony to Morton's controversial antics in Merrymount, this episode unveils the untold stories that shaped the foundations of our nation. 📚 Tune in now for a captivating blend of history and intrigue! 🎧#HistoryPodcast #WilliamBradford #ThomasMorton #AmericanHistory #PodcastJourney #UntoldStories 🌐  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

Hi, everyone, Taylor from Doom to Fail. Today's re-release is episode 14, part two. We only have like 26 episodes that we can have re-releases because those are our doubles, so we're almost at the end of this. But this re-release is on Thomas, Bradford, and William Morton. They are two men in the Plymouth Puritan beginnings of America, people coming over from Europe times. And it's a classic tale of Puritans are...

The worst. And the reason that they moved to the Americas is because everybody in England was like, you guys are a lot even for us. Like, this is no fun. So, cool. And one of them wanted to have a little more fun than the other. And he got kicked out. So I think this is a short one. Maybe not my best because I don't remember it done about it. But I shouldn't say that. I shouldn't tell you that. And I hope you love it. And if you wanted to go back and listen to anything, it's all available everywhere you listen to podcasts. And thank you for your continued support. We really love doing this, and we love that you listen. Thanks.

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortthall James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Type. We're talking stereotypes. That's true. Nothing could possibly or wrong. God, what's happened to me?

All right, I'm going to go to mine. Let's hear it. All right. I forgot where you were drinking already. Oh, like a watery ale instead of water. Cool. Okay. So to transition over to history, this story, and next week's story are like an attempt

to somehow talk about America and like how it got so weird. Like it's always been weird. But like now things are really bad, like good versus evil. bad so for this one my cousin oh yeah actually okay this is like the origins of some of our stereotypes is actually also what we're talking about as well as I'm also put the word stereotype in my notes too so talking about stereotypes in a different way my cousin Lindsay who's the smartest of my cousins suggested this and also her birthday was yesterday so happy birthday Lindsay you're the best and I also wrote this very very late last night and I wrote in all caps highlighted warning this

story contains 843 tangents. So there's a lot of tangents in here. This is kind of a ruling story. It's like story time with Taylor of what's happening right now. So come back with me in time to the 1600s. Someday I might talk about the Salem witch trials. It's not today. They happen like 50 years or so after the story we're going to talk about today. And I'm going to talk about Thomas Morton and William Bradford. One's fun and one is not fun. And they sort of of represented two different Americas. And Lindsay and my cousin called them their reminder of a Harry and a Draco, which I think totally makes sense.

Like one's fun, one's not fun. What's Draco? From Perry Potter, Draco the Bad. Oh, Drackel Malboy. Yeah. So I also like to introduce a new segment to the show. It is called, I already have children and I will have no more. Here are some names I forgot to consider when I was having them and I give them to you.

You're welcome. I'll tell you off line why I'm not but go ahead two names that I forgot to name my children from the Salem witch trials are cotton and increase from the who are the Mathers who are part of the salem witch trials I just like love those names so much and they're just like so weird they're both bananas like cotton is like not a name and increase is like a verb I just love it's it only works because of the Mathers part it's so great Cotton Mather. Is it Mathers?

Yeah. Mathers. M-A-T-H-E-R-S. Yeah, yeah, M-A-R-S. Yeah, yeah, M-A-R-S. So many times it's off making sense. So I have two places to start for some contacts. One, Salem, which is, we'll talk a little bit about that, and then the whole area of, like, Massachusetts and this time,

like this is, like, the beginning of English people coming over to America. So I'll start with Salem, even though it's not what we're talking about, talk about it a little bit, because it's something that, like, we learn in America very early. Like we learned this story like really early in school. We love it. It's like super fun. We watch the movie or a play of the crucible.

We think about how cool it is. You know, I don't know, being a teenage girl in America, I feel like you think about this all the time when you're like in that time. We also hear that maybe it's like ergot, the fungus that can make you crazy and it wasn't. Some people might think it was God. It wasn't. But the feeling that I get that I empathize with with the Salem Witch trials is the feeling of like being a teen girl and being like won't something cool happen ever could something cool

happen could something have happened to these girls like couldn't something cool happen but the answer's no like this doesn't happen and I remember like thinking about the salient witch trials and like this period of time a couple years ago there was a new book written about it and I was really excited about it and it came out but it was awful it was like unreadable it was like really bad so if you do want to read anything about it read the Shirley Jackson kind of short essay on it but essentially just like put some context around Puritans and the sailing trials. What happened then is Puritans are boring. They suck. Life was hard. And they make it a hundred times harder by being boring and mean. So the girls were told again and again that they

had no purpose. They were lonely. They were bored. They had no future. They saw women who were widowed begging door to door. They saw old women alone and dirty, poor and hungry. They didn't want that. They just wanted something to happen. And if you just pray all day, nothing happens because that's not real. So they felt disappointed and betrayed by life. So they made shit up. They wanted to be touch. They wanted to be noticed. They wanted to do something that moved any needle before they were expected to be married and have 45 babies and die in childbirth. That's what happened, but it's still fun to talk about it and think about how crazy everyone got, like the crazy mess hysteria and so many people died. You don't think or God had anything to do with it? No. There would have been other

things that happened as well. It was not like a one symptom thing. It's something like other things would have happened that did not happen. So it was not that. It was just girls meeting attention. But yeah, but it's still fine. Like I love thinking about it. I think it's a great, a great story, a great piece of our history. And then thinking about, so there's like that is in the background, like people believe in witches. They believe in all this stuff.

Massachusetts, and they say this in the last podcast when they talk about the sailing witch trials, but like Massachusetts is creepy in like the woods and the dark. You know, have you been there? Like in like a big northeastern woods. So I haven't been there, but I remember we discussed it. I forgot which case it was. Maybe it was the Murdof case. I discussed, like, the opposite of Southern Gothic is American Gothic, which is, like, the northern version of that, which is awesome.

Like, I think I love that aesthetic. You too. It's really creepy. It's cool. Like, the, um, did you see the witch? That movie? I did. Yeah.

So, like, picture like that. Like, I always, I love the part in, like, the very beginning when they're leaving the, um, like, the settlement and the gates are closing. And you just see, like, everyone's covered in mud and it's raining. and there's like a Native American who walks by and everyone just looks miserable. So like that's what kind of happening. I remember in time in high school, like I went to Massachusetts with some friends and we saw the Blair Witch Project and like lost our minds. And then like we went to our friend's house and these dudes were like telling a ghost story

about the woods and like I thought I was going to die. Like I screamed for hours. It was like super fun. And like that's what the woods are scary. So we're like a scary time. I wanted to like wear all black and a witch's hat, but my headphones wouldn't work with that. so I didn't do it.

But it's witchy. We're witchy in a fun way. So I also want to mention that every Thanksgiving. I like to yell about how the Puritans left England because they sucked. Like we were told in America in school that they left for religious freedom. And at least when I was little, I assumed that that bent or I was told or I believed that it meant you could be whatever religion you want. And America was a melting pot and it was awesome. I don't feel like that's what they're doing at all.

And that's not what they're doing. happening today either we know it's not true it's just christians who want to be the only religion so blah blah so that's the place that we're in it's dark and creepy you know we're about to hit the witch trials in a few in like a few decades so people are like have their very very puritan um at the moment here's this relationship it helps really shape the american story of like two different americas so we're in the early 1600s there's thomas morton he's the fun one he was a lawyer and a trader who arrived in 1624 from England. He settled in an area called Merrimount and established a trading post there. He was free thinking. He supported Native American

rights, which put him at odds with some of the Puritans. So he was born in 1579 in Devonshire, England. He went to Oxford. He sailed to Newfoundland in 1612 to start a fishing colony. And he moved to Plymouth where he became a fur trader in like 1613. So he had his own by, you know, the 1620s. He has his own little village. Like he's not like in charge of, but he lives there called Marymount. And as fun there as it can be in this time to live. If that makes sense. So dire and grim and awful. Yes. Yes. In 1625, he wrote a book called New English Canaan that described his experiences in America and criticized the Puritans for like being intolerant. because they are. They were there. So the other person in the story, William Bradford, he's not fun. He was a leader of the Plymouth colony. He was a governor of Plymouth for like 30 years, which is like the famous one. And he, if someone might say like, oh, that's the, you know, good American values. But like, no, he was pretty awful. And he's also this very much a Slytherin. Like there's lots of capes and he's not any fun.

I mean, you're kind of describing a pretty cool guy, though. I mean, he's not fun, though. I know, but I would like to wear a cape and... I 100% support capes. You can definitely do that. So he... So just some facts, some numbers about William Bradford. He was born in 1590 in Austrofield, England.

He became part of the separatist movement, which ties back to England being with the Church of England. I didn't want... He thought that was corrupt, which we know it is, it was, because... was made for King Henry the 8th to be able to divorce and kill his wives. But Bradford, this is cool. So he escaped to Holland to escape religious persecution. So this is part of the American story that we hear where like the peer trans are being persecuted in England and they had to leave. So they went via Holland and he ended up flying sailing to America on, what's the most famous ship that sailed to America?

The Mayflower, Santa Maria. The Mayflower. Okay. He flew us in it again. He sailed over on the Mayflower. Well, there was three, right? No, that was... No, you're thinking the Nina, the Penta, and the Zanda Maria.

Those are Christopher Columbus. So ridiculous. Fars, you were born in England. Better. So, so he came on the Mayflower, which is cool. He was the governor of Plymouth, which is, like, the famous colony. He had a common course system, so, like, there was, like, communal farming and property ownership, which sounds a little socialist, but he, you know, was

kind of like a stern ruler of Plymouth. So he and William Bradford didn't get along from the start, and in 1627, he goes over and arrests more in and dismantles his trading posts because they didn't like what he was doing. So they're just like, they're like two like kind of rival towns like living next to each other. So here's the year where the big fun versus not fun battle happens between these two. So in 1628, there's a May Day celebration. Do you know what May Day is? If that was a Canadian thing,

is that when their prime minister's born? I make that up. Do we not celebrate Justin Trudeau's birthday? I totally don't know. I mean, you don't have, we don't celebrate the current president's birthday. Maybe they have a prime minister day. I have no idea. Canadians, let us know.

So Mayday is now a holiday for workers' rights, but it's in pre-Christian Europe, so a long time ago, it was the beginning of summer and fertility, a time for feasting and dancing, winter sucks, and I feel this, like you just want to be happy and have it be warm finally. So, do you know, have you ever seen a May pole? It's like a tall wooden pole and you do like a dance around it. Like, did you ever see where would I see this? Like, in what situation would I be exposed to this? Did you see midsummer? Yeah. So like they do it in there, I think. So it's like a big pole and you have like ribbons and then you like do a dance around it and wait as you do the dance the ribbons tie on the pole it's very pretty

okay so it's like it's like a spring festival and then of course like christians were like making about jesus so it became about like devotion and prayer there's the may queen which is like what florence florence pew was in midsummer and so um so i don't know what i remember this was very late last night but i wrote have you read any books or seen midsummer to anyone so Just like, that's what we're looking at. Hey, Taylor, can I interrupt you for a second? Do you think that maybe it's a good idea if you put that jug of milk behind you in the fridge instead of letting it sit outside by the window?

It's not milk. Could you imagine? First of all, it says it's just filled water. It's a mom's ironing water. I see. Okay. Why would I just have a gallon of milk in here? I thought maybe you forgot and you can't see it, but I can, so.

Oh, my God, whatever? I was just, like, drinking a glass of milk. It's almost as gross as rabbit's blood. It is what can imagine. Okay, so it's 1628. It's May. You can assume the winter's been awful. Morton, the fun guy, and his followers, celebrate May Day with like a huge party. There's drinking, dancing, merrymaking. This is a quote that was on Wikipedia. It says, they set up a Maypole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women for their consorts, right? Dancing and frisking together, like so many fairies or furies, rather, and worse practices. As if they had a new revived and celebrated the feast. of you Roman gladys flora or ye beastly practices of ye mad. Oh my god, I can't even breath it. Bacchus, like the god, you know.

Anyway, it was rowdy. Bacchus is that? That's the god. Of wine. Of wine, okay. Yeah. There's like wine, a lot of just like sex and not puritan things. So it sounds super fun and I, there's always like something in history that would be fun to like go back to.

this feels something that's like not known as well as like you know going to like a big battle or something but i think it was super fun to go back to and be like this party it's super fun it's like you know yeah like coachella when we're in palm springs it'll be just kind of almost like that so imagine that with like puritan stare at them which is exactly what's happening in america right now so yes and i also like love well i was thinking about like what if i was there like what would it be like and also wanted to if i haven't told you before when we did one christmas in colonial williamsburg and it was awesome and like i love like doing immersive history there were a lot of capes and they have like join

these activities and like went to like a ball and learned this like dance is like line dance or whatever and I was dancing with someone like some like actor you know and he was like did you hear that Washington is going to speak later today in the town square and I was like it's fucking so fun that is so fun I you know one thing I never talked about is when I was a kid I used to love going to civil war reenactments those are my favorite thing because they would go so in detail like they would have like the little shitty tents and there'd be like a pot of stew over a fire and it was just so much yeah it was really good that's so fun i remember um in brooklyn they do like a reenactment of like a revolutionary war fight and um i met someone

that was dressed like benjamin franklin that's a picture in our slack is me and the benjamin franklin because i was so excited i was like this is awesome it was just like weird old man but i was like this is so fun oh my god that is Benjamin Franklin yeah yeah it's awesome yeah it's very very fun so So they're so mad about this over in Plymouth that they go over and they arrest Morton for having this big party and they give him a trial and they're going to send him back to England. But instead of like giving him a ticket back to England, they just maroon him on an island and wait for someone to pick him up, which is, like it'd be fun. If you have an axe with you and like, you know, some survival tools and water would be cool.

But he did get picked up and he went back to England and then the colony, the community of Marymount lasted about a year without Morton, but then it collapsed without him as, like, kind of their leader. So the Puritans kind of took over and, like, they kind of took over for the rest of the land. So I'll tell you a little bit more about what happened to them later, but really what this is, is like, this is a story of we've barely, England, English people have barely even been here for like a couple years. And they're already this huge clash between like the old world and the new world. so there's like a new world where we're going to be more free and and be more more more creative and like more you know not so strict and religious and then there's this old world that the that the puritans are trying to replicate in in the new world but the whole thing is like the old world never existed like there is no like perfect puritan world and so they're trying to do that and like nothing nostalgic is true so it's like kind of a whatever they're trying to do something that was like almost impossible which is why there's like so much conflict. So there's like, this is like a story of the conflict between individuality and being more diverse and more tolerant and then not being like really religious. Well, that's our, I think that's like our interpretation of it.

So what was the actual, what did they think they were fighting about? They were fighting about this big party and being like not being as religious as them. That's it. Yeah. They were offended by the party. They called it ungodly. Okay. That's kind of, yeah.

That's like you're just saying you're invited. that's the problem your problem is eating invited it's a good point also everyone i just my shoes just squeaked on the mat underneath my feet that was not a fart just so everybody's clear if that did pick up in the mic which i don't know if it did i'm just going to flag that somebody knows that's so funny so yeah so you can just like use this story as like a manifestation of that old versus new super religious versus a little more lax like still religious but like not as like strict and in Puritan, which is like a word we use as, you know, an adjective. So, you know, Morton was the new world, individualism, tolerance, freedom.

Bradford was the old world, religion, social hierarchy, conformity. So in 1628, Morton does go back to England. He returns a year later, and they arrest him again because they're like, we told you to leave. They like found him somehow. It's 1629, like, go anywhere else. But they catch him out of Massachusetts, so we could never go back to Massachusetts. again. And then he ends up going back to England and coming back and trying to make a colony in Maine. So Morton goes back and forth a few more times, a couple of failed ventures. He either

died. I got two conflicting stories. One said he died in England at 64. Another said he died in Maine when he was 71. So either way, he, you know, never went back to Massachusetts and didn't really contact with the Puritans again. And Bradford died in 1644, which is about 40 years before the Salem witch trials in Plymouth at the age of 67. So he just continued to like be the leader of Plymouth and continue to have it be really strict, which as we saw with Salem continued to be kind of the way that people acted and lived in, in that part of the colonies for a long time after. What's the stereotype?

I think it's a stereotype of like a not fun, really strict religious that like I am really like offended by, you know. And then I think maybe the other way they could see a stereotype of like someone who is having being like a little bit more fun being like ungodly and maybe like of the devil, which is like where we get to kind of like later with with witches and stuff. Like if you're not doing exactly what I tell you to do and conforming, then like you must be in league with the devil. Interesting. Yeah. I don't know if it's like an Austin thing necessarily. I don't think I would really expose to much in LA. So it's been most mostly here where the whole like.

witchy vibe that some women have here it's like awesome like I love that whole it's so fun it's so fun oh my god I love it I mean I told you all those crystals and all those stuff that I keep buying those are all these witches markets like they call them witches markets and you go there

and it's just yeah it's a bunch of groovy people just live in their life and like it's it's I think that some of them do like believe the stuff that they say but in large part it's like it's like having a rent fare it's like they just want to have a good time and And pretendly they're in an old-timey, you know, moments and this sage is going to ward off evil. And it's like, I love it. I have fun.

See, that's like with like, that has, like, whatever, yeah. If you want to burn sage in your house or if you want to pray to make things better, I don't give a shit. My problem is when you ruin other people's lives because of your beliefs, you know? Like, and I think like witches, like you're awesome witchy ladies. like they're not ruining anybody's life they're just burning some herbs and like i had a you know like like everyone i had 45 mental breakdowns during 2020 and i did buy some spell books you know i was like i'm going to start bearing stuff in the backyard and like protecting my house and like doing these things and like that seems fun you know like why not i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna look this up

real quick because i can't remember it off top of my head i did get a book that was absolutely disgusting that you should look at because it was free. Books and reading. This is the least used part of my Amazon account. Okay, so, damn, where's the... This is the silent part of the episode. If there's any Puritan names that you wish you'd name your children, please give us an email at june to fill a pod at gmail.com.

I've already called cotton and increase, but there's got to be more. Goody? Do you want to put the word goody in for your daughter's name? Have you thought about that? Send me an email. I thought about it. We should talk about it more.

I mean, no, that's why I can't find this. There's a book that I got. It was, um, it was Alistair Crowley's son who became like a super lame version of Alistair Prowley himself on all these books of spells that you could do. And they were like, disgusting. It was, let's just say there was a lot of like, leaving bodily fluids out in the open. So much of it was that.

It was just like this guy, like it. Like male bodily fluids. Yeah, we can say that. Or, yeah. Like, it was, if I wasn't positive that he believed in the things that he was saying, it sounded like recipe books for Pizzou Algarad. Like, it was. Exactly.

Like, it was really, really bad. It's so funny. yeah I think our stories are super similar because I think we're in like creepy like east coast woods and people are just like whether or not like Zuzu's schizophrenia had some to do with it which I assume that it did like it's that idea of being like when will something happen you know like when will something happen to me and then like I have this terrible childhood and like I want something to happen let me be provocative with this and then like in in colonial America some people are like maybe we finally have the chance to make something happen and to like do something different and to like have some free thought and the peer attendants are like no it's not where we're here and then I just think it's so it's a more think about it the more like of a big deal it is of a larger problem thinking that like when I was younger I definitely was told like we're here because people wanted to do practice whatever religion they wanted and we wanted to be you could be whatever you wanted in America and that's

not true you know and like that's not but that was never true but like I don't know why I thought with that for a while. Come here. My daughter just came in. Look what she has. Flo. Hi, Flo. Where'd you get that? Did that make it? Is that a lion? What is that? How'd you make it? Oh, there's like a perfect sign at mom's house and there was a clown, I guess. And so Lauren's got a, well, who made that then? A balloon person. I'd rather that than a clown. There's a lot of finger pointing happening off screen. Very cool. Cool. Balloon animal break. Very, very, very, you know, but you know what I mean? I feel like you can come it out. But you know, you know what I mean. I think it's like it's and now we're in this time in America today where there's this like Christian rights movement that's like trying to destroy public schools and destroy publicly funded things so that everybody has to pay to go to a Christian school so they can pick up what books people read and like just why I'm so loud enough to pay attention to any of this stuff I just live in my little bubble you can't you cannot live in your bubble you live in America you're going to find that something that's going to have

to you because you aren't paying attention to everybody else just tell me what's a vote for it i don't like you tell me i don't i don't want to pay attention to politics anymore i don't want to pay attention on in the world just you tell me what to do perfect okay yeah something tells me me to get kicked out of texas but as my first thought we should move out of texas but okay we'll talk about later i'm surprised you even convinced blair i i am gonna i mean i'm gonna wait Blair, sorry. I'm going to wait until you're past having an infant, but we should talk about visiting a daughter in Texas. I'm sure you've thought about it. Blair's very smart. She can, she knows.

Turn to the math. Cool. Well, we'll go ahead and pause recording. Thank you everyone for listening. Yeah. Thank you for the suggestion, Lindsay, for this. And thanks everyone who sent us things. Yeah, absolutely. And I'll subscribe all the things. YouTube has a lot of views, which is super cool. we got a comment but it was from an account called buy YouTube followers and I was like well I'm not going to buy YouTube followers but thank you for your interest that was my dog shaking and her collar ringing that was not me making that sound just now um yeah find us on

Instagram and follow us and share us in your stories and please um thank you for listening yep awesome thanks Taylor Thank you.