Pilgrims is a name commonly applied to early settlers of the
Plymouth Colony in present-day
Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States, with the men commonly called
Pilgrim Fathers. The Pilgrims' leadership came from the religious congregations of
Brownist English Dissenters who had fled the volatile political environment in England for the relative calm and tolerance of 16th–17th century
Holland in the
Netherlands. The Pilgrims held similar
Calvinist religious beliefs to the
Puritans but, unlike many Puritans, maintained that their congregations needed to be
separated from the
English state church. As a separatist group concerned with losing their English cultural identity if they emigrated to the Netherlands, the group arranged with English investors to establish a new colony in North America. The colony, established in 1620, became the second successful English settlement (after the founding of
Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607). The Pilgrims' modern popular story of seeking "religious freedom" has become a central theme of the
history and
culture of the United States.