Through the years we may well believe that the women of the Mayflower who became the women of Plymouth, and their children, whether in newer homes or remaining in the old, looked back to the early days of their privation, when by their anxieties, their sorrows, their economies, their endeavors, their fearlessness and faith, the foundation of their colony was laid.
We may well echo their thoughts as they remembered some of Elder Brewster’s words on their first Thanksgiving Day, which one orator has expressed as “Generations to come will look back to this hour and these scenes, this day of small things and say, ‘Here was our beginning as a people. These were our fathers and mothers. Through their trials we inherit our blessings. Their faith is our faith, their hope our hope, their God our God.’”
A CHAPLET OF ROSEMARY.
A CHAPLET OF ROSEMARY.
Burial Hill no longer bristles with the guns of the Pilgrim’s fort but is thickly studded with the graves of the generations who in turn walked on Plymouth’s first street below. One traversing this way and recalling the scenes it has witnessed, must be indeed insensitive not to feel the thrill that comes from treading on hallowed ground. Particularly must this be experienced by the descendants of the women we would honor.
We know that upon Cole’s Hill, Burial Hill and in the old burying grounds at Duxbury and Marshfield are the graves of many of the women of Plymouth, and some lie elsewhere, yet the exact location of how few is positive.
The second wife of Governor Bradford requested in her will that she might be laid as near her husband’s grave as might be. Their family plot is easily found. By another will, that of Captain Myles Standish, we may know where two of the women of his family rest—since his own grave is located and his request was to lie beside his two dear daughters—one his son’s wife Mary, the other his own lovely Lora, whose early death caused him much sorrow. At Marshfield, in the family burying ground, Susanna Winslow rests. A stone in the center of the town of Taunton marks the grave of Elizabeth Pool. A tablet at Little Compton, has been erected to the memory of Elizabeth Pabodie, John and Priscilla Alden’s eldest daughter; she lived her later years in this place. Mary Chilton Winslow lies beside her husband, in King’s Chapel Burying Ground, Boston; their names are marked upon a slab at the gate in Tremont Street. Elizabeth Tilly Howland, after she became a widow, went to live with her daughter, Lydia Brown, in Swansea and there died; her husband’s grave on Burial Hill is known, but she was not brought back to rest beside him. The grave of Mary Allerton, who lived to such a great age and saw the foundations of twelve of the thirteen colonies which formed the nucleus of the United States, is indicated by a monument erected to her and her husband on Burial Hill.
We would willingly make a pilgrimage to visit each known spot, regretting, the while, that there were so many we might not include. Yet upon all we may place the same unfading, if invisible, wreath of the leaves that signify remembrance.