COMMON HOUSE
This tablet is erected by the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts to mark
the site of the first house built by
The Pilgrims
In that house on the 21st of February 1621 (New Style) the right of popular suffrage was exercised and Myles Standish was chosen Captain by a majority vote. On or near this spot, April 1, 1621, the memorable treaty with Massasoit was made.
Next to the Common House came that of Peter Brown, and third, that of John Goodman. Farther up the street, at its intersection by the path to the Indian ford over the brook, was the house and land of William Brewster, Elder and spiritual leader of the Colony.
Across the path, continuing up the hill, were the houses of John Billington, Francis Cooke, and Edward Winslow. On the opposite side, conveniently near his duties at the fort, was the house of Captain Myles Standish. Next to that, descending the hill again towards the shore, was the large lot and house of the Governor, William Bradford. Part of his garden was used in 1637 for the site of the first Meeting House. Next to Bradford’s house came those of Stephen Hopkins, and of the faithful physician, Dr. Samuel Fuller. On most of these lots, descriptive tablets have been placed by the Town of Plymouth.
Six years after the first labor of building the settlement had been accomplished, the Colony received a visitor from the Dutch trading post at Manhattan, which sent its Secretary, Isaac De Rasiere, to confer with them about their respective trading transactions.
In a letter to Holland after his return from Plymouth, he describes vividly and minutely the town as he saw it in October 1627.
“New Plymouth lies on the slope of a hill, stretching east toward the seacoast, with a broad street about a cannon shot of about eight hundred feet long leading down the hill.... The houses are constructed of hewn plank, with gardens also enclosed behind and at the sides with hewn planks, so that their houses and court yards are arranged in very good order, with a stockade against a sudden attack; and at the ends of the street are three wooden gates.
In the center at the cross street stands the Governor’s house, before which is a square enclosure upon which four patteros are mounted so as to flank along the streets.”
The old street, following unchanged its original direction, has been in constant use for more than three hundred years, and its present inhabitants number several descendants of the first dwellers.
Town Brook
and
The Brewster Gardens
“The meersteads and garden plottes of those which came first, layed out 1620.”
To honor the memory of the courageous men and women who established their homes and made their gardens along the Town Brook in 1621–22, Mrs. William Forbes of Milton, with the co-operation of the Town, created in 1920–22, a beautiful little park on the site of the first meersteads.
The land apportioned to Elder Brewster was half way up the hill, and his garden sloped down to the brook. A flowing spring in the hollow has been reclaimed for a drinking fountain, and a branch has also been piped to the Main Street in front of the Government Building which was built on Brewster land.
The inscription on the fountain reads:
“Pilgrim Spring
on the Meerstead
set off to
Elder William Brewster
in the original allotment
December, 1620
erected by the Town 1915
“Freely drink and quench your thirst
Here drank the Pilgrim Fathers first.”
Near a little pool below the spring stands a fine statue of a Pilgrim Maiden, by H. H. Kitson. It is inscribed:
“To those intrepid English women whose courage, fortitude, and devotion brought a new nation into being, this statue of the Pilgrim maiden is dedicated.”
Presented to the Town of Plymouth by the
National Society of New England Women.
The statue is full of life, vigorous and alert, typical of the strength and cheerful courage with which the youthful Pilgrims met the hardships and dangers of their new homes.
Above the spring, on the upward path to the street, the National Society of Daughters of the American Colonists have placed a stone seat in remembrance of the women who came in the ship Ann in 1623. From here the brook in its little valley can be seen winding to the sea; on its banks, the gardens which still bloom behind the old houses on Leyden Street, occupy the same ground as those “garden plottes” where the Pilgrim women cultivated the herbs which they consigned to England, three hundred years ago. Perhaps no gardens in America can claim a longer history of continuous use.
At the mouth of the brook was the herring weir, built before 1627 to control the annual run of herring up the stream to the fresh water ponds above. The herring still run in the spring through a similar weir, and are still a source of revenue to the town.
The Town Brook with its springs of “sweet water,” the herring fishing, and the ford which lead to the Indian encampment on the southern hill, made one of the important centers of the community life, and the gardens and sunny exposures of the little houses on the bank, protected by the guns on the Fort Hill above them, must have given some quiet and happy moments to the anxious and homesick Pilgrim women.
