The Mayflower was the ship that carried the Pilgrim Fathers from England to Plymouth, in what is now Massachusetts, in 1620. They were Puritans who left because they wanted a new community where they could practise their religion in their own way. In the United States, if someone says a family ‘came over on the Mayflower,’ they mean those ancestors arrived very early — almost at the start of English settlement there — and the phrase is often a boast about being ‘old American.’ Though actually, only a small number of people can truly claim it; others say it loosely. The ship’s name is the same as mayflower, a plant that blooms in May (May + flower). In history writing the ship is treated as a proper name, so it is usually capitalised.