Francis Cooke

Mayflower Compact

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This bas-relief depicting the signing of the Mayflower Compact is on Bradford Street in Provincetown directly below the Pilgrim Monument.

The Mayflower Compact, a painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris which was widely reproduced through much of the 20th century

The Mayflower Compact was the first governing document of Plymouth Colony. It was written by the colonists, later together known to history as the Pilgrims, who crossed the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower. Almost half of the colonists were part of a separatist group seeking the freedom to practice Christianity according to their own determination and not the will of the English Church.^{[citation needed]} It was signed on November 11, 1620 (OS)^[1] by 41 of the ship's one hundred and two passengers,^[2] in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod.