William Bradford

Leader and historian of the Plymouth Colony — whose Of Plymouth Plantation is the primary document of early Puritan New England and the founding myth of American providential history.

Of Plymouth Plantation as founding text: Bradford's account is the only comprehensive contemporaneous record of the Pilgrim voyage and the Plymouth Colony's first decades. As governor of Plymouth for 30 years, Bradford was both actor and chronicler. His narrative established the interpretive frame — Pilgrims as providential actors, their survival as divine confirmation of their mission — that became the template of American exceptionalist historiography. Also documents the economic experiments (collective farming abandoned in favor of private plots) that libertarians frequently cite.