The Colony and Town Records
1620
1691
Long antedating the inscriptions of bronze and stone, are the early written records of the settlement, both of the Colony and of the Town. From them may be traced the affairs of the Plymouth community from its beginning.
Nothing can give a more vivid description of the details of Pilgrim life, or the self-reliance with which the infant colony attacked the problems of an independent state, than the yellowed manuscripts in the handwriting of Gov. Bradford and Gov. Winslow. They record questions debated and decided by the assembled freemen of the Colony, who chose their officers of government, and made their laws, under the Compact framed by the Pilgrims before leaving the Mayflower.
The first dated record is a rough drawing of the First Street, with the intersecting path crossing the brook. (This intersection is now the Town Square.) This diagram gives a partial list of the house lots, or meersteads, portioned out of the different families, and the names of the builders of the first houses.
By another memorable record, the system of trial by jury is established.
“Dec. 17, 1623. It was ordained by the court that criminals, debtors, and trespassers should be tried by the verdict of 12 honest men, impanelled by authority in form of a jury upon their oaths.”
Only two cases of witchcraft were ever brought to trial in Plymouth. In both, the accused was acquitted; in one, moreover, the accuser was found guilty of defamation of character, and obliged to apologize and pay the costs of the case.
Many of the records deal with agricultural matters. The first entry on the Town records describes the earmarks of the cattle, the first of which were brought by Winslow from England in March 1623. Bounties were voted for killing blackbirds who stole the sprouting grain in the cornfields. Bounties were also granted for the pelts of marauding wolves.
Petitions soon appeared for grants of lands in distant parts of the colony.
In 1691, when the Plymouth colony was merged with the colony of Massachusetts Bay, it was voted “that the Books, Records and Files of the General Court of the late Colony of New Plymouth be committed to the care of the Clerk of the Inferior Court, to be kept and lodged in Plymouth.”
These early records consist of eighteen manuscript volumes, in which may be traced the handwriting of Gov. Bradford, and Gov. Edward Winslow, as well as those of Nathaniel Morton and other Clerks of the Colony. They cover such matters as the proceedings of the General Court and Court of Assistants; Deeds; Wills and Inventories; Judicial Acts of the Court; Treasurers’ Accounts; Laws; and Births, Marriages, and Deaths. They begin with the year 1633.
They are now deposited in the Plymouth Registry of Deeds, on Russell St. In 1820 a commission was chosen to copy such portions as they thought desirable, and these are kept in the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth in the State House in Boston. In 1855, they were published by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Plymouth Colony’s copy of the proceedings of the New England Confederacy, a federation of the New England colonies which in many ways foreshadowed our present Federal Union, is deposited in the Registry of Deeds. The New England Confederacy was undertaken in 1643 for mutual protection against the Indians, and was dissolved by the Royal Governor, Sir Edmund Andros in 1685.
The early records of the Town, as distinct from the Colony, are kept by the Town Clerk in the Plymouth Town House. In 1889, the Records, from 1636 to 1783, were published by the order of the Town, and may be consulted in the Public Library and elsewhere.
All these early records will repay the research of the student of American history.
“But this must stand above all fame and zeal:
The Pilgrim Fathers laid the ribs and keel.
On their strong lines we base our social health—
The man—the home—the town—the Commonwealth.”
—John Boyle O’Reilly
Poem read at the dedication of the National Monument to the Forefathers August 1, 1889
