POST OFFICE AND CUSTOM HOUSE.
Continuing up Leyden street to Main street, we pass on our left the U. S. Government post office and custom house building, a handsome Colonial edifice completed in 1915. This site is peculiarly and historically appropriate for the Federal building, as it is the lot assigned to William Brewster, Dec. 28, 1620, (old style), in the laying out just described. He was the elder or spiritual teacher of the Pilgrims, so on his homestead where he taught religious liberty which distinguishes our country, the Nation places its representative cornerstone—a most happy coincidence of the marking of Colonial and National beginnings. The public fountain at the corner gives invitation to “freely drink and quench your thirst” from the Pilgrim Spring on the Brewster meerstead, the water of which is sent by electric power from the cool, copiously gushing source near the bank of Town Brook, 200 feet away.
Plymouth in 1627
In 1627, Isaac DeRaiseres, an officer from the Dutch Colony of New Netherland, now New York, visited Plymouth, and in a letter to Holland sends the following description of appearance of the place:—
“New Plymouth lies on the slope of a hill stretching east toward the sea coast, with a broad street about a cannon shot of eight hundred (yards) long, leading down the hill, with a (street) crossing in the middle northwards to the rivulet and southwards to the land.[1] The houses are constructed of hewn planks, 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 centre, on the cross street, stands the Governor’s house, before which is a square enclosure, upon which four patereros (steen-stucken) are mounted, so as to flank along the streets. Upon the hill they have a large square house, with a flat roof, made of thick sawn planks, stayed with oak beams, upon the top of which they have six cannons, which shoot iron balls of four and five pounds, and command the surrounding country.”
[1]An error in statement of the points of the compass is here evident. It should be “southwards to the rivulet and northwards to the land.”
Town Square
