By the end of the week the Mayflower had brought over her company of emigrants—seventy-three males and twenty-nine females—and December 25, 1620, they began to erect the first house "for the common use to receive them and their goods." The Indian name of the place was Patuxet, but the emigrants called it New Plymouth "after Plymouth, in old England, the last town they left in their native country";[17 ] and it was a curious coincidence that the spot had already received from John Smith the name of Plymouth. Later the town was called simply Plymouth, while the colony took the name of New Plymouth.
1 ([return])
[ Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 699; Bradford, Plimoth Plantation, 117.]
2 ([return])
[ Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 699-701, 731-742, 745.]
3 ([return])
[ Gorges, Description of New England (Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, 3d series, VI.), 57.]
4 ([return])
[ Poore, Charters and Constitutions, I., 921. ]