Leiden’s American Pilgrim Museum, which tells the history of the Pilgrims, their time in the Netherlands and their voyage to America, will open for the last time in its present location this weekend.

The museum is among the country’s smallest – just two rooms and 10 visitors at a time – and now the owners of the building which has housed the collection since 1997 have decided to go for a change of use. And that means the collection needs a new home.

“They’ve been generous enough to host us for over 25 years and that’s been amazing,” Sarah Moine, the museum’s curator and director, told Dutch News. “But if we want to grow, if we want to get more volunteers and more people to come, if we want to have a library or temporary exhibitions, that’s just not possible. The museum is very small and we can’t push out the walls.”

Moine took over the museum following the death of its founder and director Jeremy Bangs in 2023, having started as an intern while doing a master’s degree at Leiden University in 2015. In the years that followed, she became more and more involved with its day-to-day operations and even learned 17th century Dutch so she could read historical texts.

Additional challenges

The Covid crisis hit hard. The year 2020 marked the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ departure for America but the museum was closed for much of that year and could only allow in four people in at a time throughout 2021, missing on a much-needed visitor boost.

Since taking things over, Moine has faced other hurdles that have included funding concerns, limited opening hours, and attracting and retaining skilled staff members to help out. She handles the tours and plenty of other tasks all on her own while juggling her PhD research.

“It’s really unsustainable to be just one person managing this whole institution,” she said. “If I break my leg, I can’t come in and the museum is closed. If I move, the museum closes. There is no team. With limited funds, this is a problem that a lot of museums like this one face, especially if they try to do more.”

The current museum

The current location was built between 1365 and 1370 and contains dozens of artefacts along with historic furniture and decor. It’s typically illuminated by candles and light trickling in through the windows. Stepping across the threshold can feel like going back in time several centuries.

It’s also currently the only museum in the country devoted to the American Pilgrims and one of the few places in Leiden where history buffs can go to learn about the years they spent in the Netherlands before setting sail for North America.

The museum continues to attract plenty of visitors, especially from the United States. Some are eager to hear more about this often overlooked period in American history, others with ancestral ties to the Pilgrims want to research their forefathers.

Moine is now in the middle of a fundraising effort, is contacting historical societies to help get the word out, and is asking for donations via the American Pilgrim Museum’s website.

The American embassy in The Hague, however, declined to comment on the museum’s efforts to stay afloat.

Among the options for the future are asking a Leiden museum or institution to create space for it. A temporary relocation to the city’s Pieterskerk, which hosts an annual Thanksgiving service and serves as the final resting place of several Pilgrims, is another possible option.

“When I first started here, I completely underestimated the interest Americans have for this type of early history,” says Moine. “The one thing we are absolutely sure of is that we must stay in Leiden. There’s no point in having something about the Pilgrims elsewhere. They spent a bit of time in Amsterdam and a night in Rotterdam, but that isn’t the heart of their story.”