The Pilgrims’ Way

c.1373–1438 · England

English mystic and pilgrim who dictated The Book of Margery Kempe — often called the first autobiography in English. A brewer and mother of fourteen who failed at business twice, she walked away from ordinary life to travel to Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago, weeping openly, arguing with clergy, and insisting on the authority of her own experience in an age that gave her none.

1590–1657 · England & Plymouth Colony

Governor of Plymouth Colony for more than thirty years and author of Of Plymouth Plantation, the great chronicle of the Mayflower generation. He steered a fragile settlement through the first winter that killed half its people, replaced a failing communal farming system with family plots, kept peace where he could, and wrote it all down with unsparing honesty.

1703–1758 · Colonial America

Colonial America’s most formidable mind — a preacher-philosopher who wrote seventy personal Resolutions at nineteen and examined his own soul with scientific rigor. Central figure of the Great Awakening, author of treatises on freedom of the will and the nature of true affections, and, at the end of his life, president of Princeton. He walked in the woods to think and wrote of beauty as seriously as of judgment.

1910–1997 · India & Albania

Albanian-born nun who left the safety of a convent classroom to found the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta's poorest streets, building a global order devoted to the dying, the abandoned, and the unwanted. Nobel Peace laureate who kept working in sandals.