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.