Located at Beschuitsteeg 9, in a beautifully preserved house built ca 1375 near the clock tower of the Hooglandskerk, the Leiden American Pilgrim museum tells the stories of the founders of New England, the Pilgrims. Furnishings from Pilgrim times show aspects of daily life, while the story of the Pilgrims themselves is illustrated with a collection of sixteenth and seventeenth-century maps and engravings by such artists as Gerad Mercator, Adrian van de Venne, and Jacques de Gheyn. Fleeing religious persecution in England, these Calvinists, who had separated from the Church of England, found refuge in Leiden in 1609, where they lived until they began to emigrate to America in 1620 on the Mayflower.

The museum tells the story of the Pilgrims' life in Leiden where contact with other groups of refugees, particularly with the French-speaking Calvinists called Walloons or Huguenots, expanded their horizons and led to the development of a uniquely cosmopolitan view of the world. Having spend a dozen formative years in The Netherlands, the Pilgrims became the source through which several innovations derived from Dutch legal and social precedent entered the American culture, including civil marriage registration and the celebration of special days of Thanksgiving.

The Pilgrims’ move to Leiden was carefully prepared. Their minister John Robinson and about one hundred other Pilgrims requested permission to reside in Leiden, in a document dated February 12, 1609. The city’s permission included the famous statement that Leiden refuses no honest people free entry to come live in the city, as long as they behave honestly, and obey all the laws and ordinances, and under those conditions the applicants’ arrival here would be pleasing and welcome. The town went further, refusing to cooperate with the request of the English ambassador that the Pilgrims be extradited. Preparing to emigrate to America. the Pilgrims counted four hundred families intending to move to what to them was a New World. This increase consisted of people from East Anglia, London, Kent, and the West Country of England, besides Walloon refugees in Leiden and some Dutch families, who joined the original group which had begun in the villages of Scrooby, Babworth, Austerfield, and Gainsborough in northern Nottinghamshire and adjacent Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. Their spiritual leader, Rev. John Robinson, had once been a staff member at Cambridge University. In Leiden he was a member of the University, participating in the theological debates about free will between Leiden’s professors Jacobus Arminius, Franciscus Gomarus, and their successors.

Leiden, where the Pilgrims sought refuge in the spring of 1609, was a town of refugees. Nearly a third of the population (whose total was about 40,000) were foreign-born. Leiden had become a city ca. 1000, when its castle the Gravensteen was the residence of the Count of Holland. Another older castle, the round Burcht, dominates a man-made hill overlooking the town, where a major north-south road crossed the Rijn River and the old Roman road (now the main street, the Breestraat). The Gravensieen and the Burcht are among many ancient buildings within walking distance of the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum. Others include the City Hall, where many Pilgrim couples went to register their marriages; the Pieterskerk, where John Robinson was buried; the Latin School, where Rembrandt was a pupil in Pilgrim times; and the University Building (Academiegebouw), where theological debates attended by Robinson were held. Between the Breestraat and the Pieterskerk, on the Pieterskerkkoorsteeg, is an archway into the little alley known as William Brewster Alley. Here Brewster lived and led the Pilgrims’ clandestine printing operation, assisted by Edward Winslow, later to become an important international diplomat. Facing the square in front of the Pieterskerk is the Jean Pesijns Almshouse, occupying the site of John Robinson’s house. Across from the entrance to the Boerhaave National Museum of the History of Science you will see the picturesque ruins of the east wall of Leiden’s Vrouwekerk, used by the French-speaking Calvinist refugees in the early seventeenth century. Several of them joined the Pilgrims and emigrated to New England, including ancestors of American presidents Grant, Bush, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (Delano is an English version of the Leiden Walloon family name De la Noye.) From the Walloon congregation a large group of families followed the Pilgrim example and in 1622 took ship for America, where they became early settlers of New York.

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The Leiden American Pilgrim Museum Foundation is a nonprofit cultural institution.
Museum address : Beschuitsteeg 9, Leiden.
Mailing address : Mandenmakerssteeg 11, 2311 ED Leiden
Telephone [from USA] 001-31-71-5122413
Telephone [in Netherlands]  071-5122413
email address: bangsflynn@cs.com