THE MONUMENT OVER PLYMOUTH ROCK
For the 300th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims, the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America built a beautiful portico of Doric columns over the Rock.
This replaced the “monumental canopy,” whose corner stone had been laid Aug. 2, 1859, under the care of the Pilgrim Society.
At the beginning of the Revolution, a large section, split from the main rock, had been carried by the patriots of Plymouth with great ceremony and enthusiasm to the Town Square, and there placed beneath a Liberty Pole to rouse and maintain patriotic feeling.
In 1834 this fragment was removed to the front of Pilgrim Hall, and surrounded by an iron railing inscribed with the names of the Pilgrim Fathers. It was returned to the shore again in 1880, and the severed fragment fitted into its original position.
Finally in 1921, all parts of the Rock were strongly cemented together, and now rest, where the tide reaches it, under the new portico on the shore.
The park reservation surrounding the Rock, from the roadway eastward to the water, is the property of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and is cared for and controlled by the State.
“Plymouth Rock does not mark a beginning or an end. It marks a revelation of that which is without beginning and without end, a purpose shining through eternity with a resplendent light, undimmed even by the imperfections of men, and a response, an answering purpose from those who oblivious, disdainful of all else, sought only an avenue for the immortal soul.”
—Calvin Coolidge
Address read at the opening of the Tercentenary Celebration at Plymouth, Dec. 21, 1920.
COLE’S HILL
The first Burying Ground.
“But what was most sad and lamentable was, that in two or three months half of their number died, being the depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts.”
—from William Bradford’s
Of Plymouth Plantation
Before the Mayflower left Cape Cod, and while she lay at anchor in Plymouth harbor, a violent and fatal sickness broke out among her passengers.
Confinement in their close and crowded cabin, the hardship of a long and stormy voyage, poor food, and the exposure of building their first houses on shore, caused many of the Pilgrim company to lose their lives, in sight of the promised land they had ventured so much to gain.
Hardly a family but lost one or two of its members; wives, their husbands, children, their parents; before spring came, one half of the little colony had perished and were secretly buried on this hill by the shore.
Three hundred years later, the General Society of Mayflower Descendants placed a handsome sarcophagus to honor and receive these dead from their nameless graves, which time and accident had disturbed, and the Massachusetts Tercentenary Commission set aside a park reservation on the crest of the hill, to surround the monument. It was formally dedicated September 8, 1921.
On the side facing the street, the inscription reads:
“This Monument marks the First Burying Ground in Plymouth of the Passengers of the Mayflower.
“Here under cover of darkness the fast dwindling company laid their dead, levelling the earth above them lest the Indians should know how many were the graves.
“Reader! History records no nobler venture for faith and freedom than that of this Pilgrim band.
“In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and cold they laid the foundations of a state wherein every man, through countless ages should have liberty to worship God in his own way.
“May their example inspire thee to do thy part in perpetuating and spreading the lofty ideals of our republic throughout the world!”
At one end of the memorial is inscribed:
“The Bones of the Pilgrims found at various times in or near this enclosure and preserved for many years in the canopy over the Rock were returned at the time of the Tercentenary celebration and are deposited within this monument.”
“Erected by the General Society of
Mayflower Descendants A.D. 1920.”
On the opposite end of the monument is:
“About a hundred sowls came over in this first ship, and began this work which God in his Goodness hath hithertoe Blessed. Let his Holy Name have ye praise.”
Bradford 1650.