Hailing this votive day,
Looking with fond survey,
Upon the weary way,
Of Pilgrim feet.”
The next use of the word was made by Samuel Davis in a hymn written by him for the celebration in 1799, the first verse of which is as follows:
“Hail Pilgrim fathers of our race!
With grateful hearts your toils we trace.
Again this votive day returns
And finds us bending o’er your urns.”
The word was undoubtedly suggested to Judge Davis by a casual remark of Governor Bradford in his history of Plymouth Plantation expressing the regret of the colonists at leaving Leyden, as follows: “But they knew they were Pilgrims, and looked not much on those things but lifted up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and so quieted their spirits.” The first use of the scallop shell associated with the Plymouth Pilgrims was at the anniversary celebration in 1820, when at the ball in the evening some young ladies hung a shell suitably decorated on the breast of Mr. Webster, the orator of the day. It simply expresses the sentiment that man is a wayfarer travelling toward another and a better world. I have seen it somewhere stated that it was worn by the Pilgrims returning from the Holy Land, and if such is the case as the scallop is abundant on the shores of the Mediterranean, it may have been adopted to attest their pilgrimage. In the chamber of the canopy are deposited four skeletons of Pilgrims buried in the winter of 1620-1 on Cole’s Hill, which were discovered in 1854 by workmen digging a trench for laying water pipes in Carver street, a little south of the foot of Middle street.