Pilgrims or Pilgrim Fathers is the name commonly applied to early settlers of the Plymouth Colony. Their leadership came from a religious congregation who had fled a volatile political environment in the East Midlands of England for the relative calm of Holland in the Netherlands. Concerned with losing their cultural identity, the group later arranged with English investors to establish a new colony in North America. The colonists faced a lengthy series of challenges, from bureaucracy, impatient investors and internal conflicts to sabotage, storms, disease and uncertain relations with the indigenous peoples. The colony, established in 1620, would ultimately succeed, the second to do so among several English attempts. Their story, often embellished, has become a central theme in United States cultural identity.

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