Provincetown Developing Relationship With U.K. Town Where Pilgrims Lived

PROVINCETOWN – The Executive Director of the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum recently returned from a trip to the United Kingdom to visit the area where the Pilgrims came from.

David Weidner spent time at multiple schools in Nottinghamshire, England in hopes of creating partnerships ahead of the Provincetown 400 commemorations.

“It was really a fabulous opportunity to have a chance to visit with the Pilgrim fathers and mothers in Bassetlaw, which is a district in Nottinghamshire where the Pilgrims actually came from,” Weidner said.

Weidner was invited to the region after a school advisor in Nottinghamshire heard an interview he did last September with BBC Radio Nottingham. The interview was part of the station’s campaign to raise awareness that many of the Pilgrims, including their leader William Brewster, originally came from Scrooby and surrounding villages of North Nottinghamshire.

Over several days, Weidner visited St. Peters C of E Primary School – Gringley-on-the-Hill, and Sturton (Le-Steeple) C of E Primary School.

The goal of the visits is to creating educational activities that look into the lives of Pilgrims before they left England.

Pilgrims that landed in Provincetown in 1620 where they signed the Mayflower compact came from the Bassetlaw district area of Nottinghamshire, which includes Scrooby and Gringley.

“What we are hoping to create are educational activities, both Facetime, realtime and perhaps having some school visits and exchanges between teachers here and teachers in Bassetlaw,” Weidner said.

Weidner was also interviewed again by BBC Radio Nottingham about his visit. That interview can be heard here at the 1:50:00 mark.

Weidner said the 2020 Commemoration planning is moving ahead.

A committee made up of about 25 local businesses leaders, government officials and PMPM staff and trustees is working to create activities and programs to be held through the 2020.

“Currently what are planning to do is to set up opportunities for educational programs and historic reenactments of the Mayflower Compact so that our visitors, tourists and historians can learn more about what happened here on the shores of Provincetown in 1620,” Weidner said.