Plymouth Company

“ In the spring a ship which arrived with supplies from England brought the news of two deaths, that of Chief Justice Popham, and that of Gilbert's elder brother, to whose estates he was heir. The enterprise was forthwith abandoned and all returned to England with most discouraging reports. The further career of the Plymouth Company does not at present concern us. It never achieved any notable success. When the colonization of New England was at length accomplished it was in a manner that was little dreamed of by the king who granted or the men who obtained the charter of 1606. ”

“ Persons chiefly interested in the Second Colony; the Plymouth Company.
The persons interested in the Second Colony, in that northern zone to which attention had recently been directed by the voyages of Gosnold, Pring, and Weymouth, were represented by certain gentlemen connected with the western counties, especially by Ferdinando Gorges, governor of the garrison at Plymouth in Devonshire, who was afterwards to be Lord Proprietor of the Province of Maine, and to play a part of some importance in the early history of New England. This company came to be known as the Plymouth Company. ”

“ However, it shows us the uncertainty of all human things, and how foolish it is to take pleasure in them or trust to them.
In the big ship Captain Standish was sent over from the settlement, with instructions and letters both to their friends of the company and to the honourable Council of [167] New England. They requested the company, since they only meant to let them have goods for sale, that they might have them upon easier terms, as they would never be able to bear such high interest or allow so much per cent; and that they should send goods which were useful and suitable to them. ”

“ The officers were quartered in the casemates, and the privates in various buildings, the Cambridge and Halifax companies in the carriage shop, the Plympton company in a room overhead, the two Plymouth companies in the forge, which had been floored over, the East Bridgewater, New Bedford, Sandwich and Lowell companies in other buildings, and the remainder of the Massachusetts companies in tents. The health of the men was good, only ten being in the hospital, and twenty off duty all told in the thirteen companies. ”

“ It pleased God that your ship called the Charity arrived at Plymouth in New England about five weeks after her departure from the English coast, but the certain day I know not, because I was at that time sixty leagues from thence at Pemaquid a-fishing. But after she had delivered her passengers and goods, she went immediately to Cape Ann, where, in all likelihoods, they are like to make a good voyage, if God withhold it not. For in all possibility, the settled course which yourself and the Company have taken will bring in much profit—for indeed, it is the only means above all other. ”

“ The vessel which bore so rich a cargo of faith to the New World, and has enjoyed such fame, was destined to have a prosaic end. After she had borne the “Pilgrim Fathers” safely across the Atlantic, she was sold as a trader, and after many years in the East India Company’s service was lost off Masulipatam on the east coast of India.
Plymouth played its gallant part in the Civil War. The Royalist forces recognized the importance of the possession of such a town and attacked it almost continuously for several years. It also had to stand actual and protracted siege. ”

“ He was evidently trained in a business school, and was repeatedly placed in positions of trust by his fellow-citizens. He was the first President of the Old Colony Insurance Company, and of the Old Colony Bank, holding both positions until his death. He was among the first to enter the business of the whale fishery, and was among its most energetic and competent managers. The enterprise of building Long Wharf, and putting the steamboat General Lafayette on the line between Plymouth and Boston, was chiefly due to him and James Bartlett. ”

“ Ships had often gone north from Virginia to fish, before the king granted monopoly rights over fishing to the Council for New England, created in 1620. The Virginia Company thought its interests damaged, continued to sell licenses to fish in the disputed area, and futilely protested the monopoly in the Privy Council. Pory was to get the Company firsthand information about the fishing business in New England, see what the Council for New England was actually doing, and assess the prospects of the Plymouth settlement. ”

“ On the whole, however, the religious bonds of the London backers of Plymouth Colony have received too little attention and their mercenary objectives have been contrasted too sharply with the purity of motive of the Pilgrims. In the Massachusetts Bay Company, on the other hand, it is acknowledged that the investors shared “Puritan” religious and political ends inspiring them to encourage colonial ventures. This company included among its members nine Londoners who previously had been adventurers in the founding of Plymouth. ”

“ The Plymouth people were not ‘misguided by their religious theories,’ nor influenced by an ‘imitation of the primitive Christians,’ in forming their joint stock company. They entered into this hard and disadvantageous engagement with the Merchant Adventurers not voluntarily, but of necessity, in order to obtain shipping for transporting themselves to America; and they put their own little property into a common fund in order to purchase provisions for the voyage. It was a partnership that was instituted, not a community of goods, as that phrase is commonly understood. ”

“ As a younger son, Altham inherited little of his parents’ wealth and so, over objections by his relatives, sought excitement and his fortune in the expanding world of English overseas trade. Altham began as an investor in the Company of Adventurers for New Plymouth, served for a time as agent of the Company, and became an admirer of the colonists and New England with such ardor that he could more easily envision the colony’s future success than see the hardships which the planters were enduring when he first arrived. ”

“ Altham crossed the Atlantic to Plymouth the first time in the summer of 1623. He went as “Captain” of the Little James (James Bridge, master) , the pinnace of about 44 tons which the Company was sending to the plantation for use in fishing and fur-trading expeditions. In 1623, the expert in charge of sailing a ship was her “master,” and if there was a captain, he had command over the military and mercantile affairs of the voyage. Since his ship carried authorization to operate as a privateer, Altham had the decision about taking prizes as well as the transaction 22 of business. ”

“ So they called the company together and conferred with them, and came to the conclusion that the trade should be managed as before, to help to pay the debts; and all eligible persons should be enrolled as purchasers, single freemen to have a single share, and every father of a family to be allowed to purchase as many shares as there were members of his family,—that is to say one for himself, one for his wife, and one for every child that he had living with him. ”

“ An iron foundry does a large business in stovemaking, and at Chiltonville there is a big branch plant of the Boston Woven Hose and Rubber Company, under Plymouth management which supports quite a village of its own. ”

“ Although the investors in the original67 company lost most of their money, the businessmen who stayed with the enterprise, such as Sherley, seem to have increased their capital.
The Pilgrims, too, achieved success, for they had built the essentials of a free and self-sustaining community. If they were never wealthy in their new environment, the leaders of Plymouth, developing business experience and judgment, by 1645 enjoyed modest prosperity. ”

“ When the Plymouth Woolen Mill went into operation about 1865, a Scotchman by the name of Fernside was employed as a wool sorter. After the manufacture of flannels was abandoned he bought and settled on land in Duxbury, which a man of the same name occupied more than two hundred years before. A story of what perhaps may be called a coincidence, was told me by our townsman Wm. Burns. He came from Scotland, and on his arrival between 1850 and 1860, was employed in the Cordage Company’s store at Seaside. One day a man drove up to the store, and as he alighted, Mr. ”

“ Founding of Plymouth.—Destitution and Sickness.—Death of Carver.—Election of Bradford.—Defiance of the Indians
444Plymouth, in memory of the hospitalities which they had received at Plymouth, in England, and in a few days they commenced the erection of dwellings. The exposure of the explorers, and of others who had reached the shore by wading, had brought on disease, and nearly one half of the company were sick when the first blow of the ax was struck in the primeval forest. Faith and hope nerved the arms of the healthy, and they began to build. "This was the origin of New England ”

“ Bartlett, while in Nantucket on business, induced Mr. Wm. Collingwood, then living there, to come to Plymouth and superintend the refining of oil, and the manufacture of spermaciti candles.
In 1822 another company was formed consisting of James Bartlett, Jr., Josiah Robbins, Isaac L. and Thomas Hedge, John B. Bates, Thomas Jackson, Jr., John Thomas, Henry Jackson, Jacob Covington, Daniel Jackson, Jacob Jackson, Allen Danforth, Isaac Sampson, John Harlow, Jr., Richard Holmes, Jr., Ichabod Shaw, Isaac Barnes, Lemuel Bradford, George Bacon, Rufus Robbins and Ephraim Harlow. ”

“ The whaling and fishing industries were active and prosperous and Boston had not yet drawn away from Plymouth any considerable portion of its foreign trade. Molasses and sugar from the West India Islands, salt from Turks Island and Cadiz, and iron from Gothenberg, continued to come in, the last free of that burdensome duty, which has destroyed the iron industries of the old colony. I can hear today the rattling of the bars which Stephen Thomas and others carted through our streets to the various manufactories established in Plymouth, Carver, Wareham, Plympton and Kingston. ”

“ The character of Plymouth’s industrial life has entirely changed within a half century. Within the memory of men now living, the time was when the town boasted a fleet of seventy-five fishermen, and enjoyed prestige as a fishing port. In common with other seaport towns of New England, this industry has departed, but thriving manufactories have risen in its place and coal barges and steamships are doing business at the port, superseding the old fishing schooners which once crowded the wharves or whitened the harbor with their sails. ”

“ Their manufacturing product is over $10,000,000 a year, and their big steamships bringing from Yucatan directly to Plymouth great cargoes of fibre as raw material, give the port, as one of foreign import, rank in Massachusetts over all other ports of the state directly next to Boston. There are three large mills engaged in the production of woolen and worsted cloths, one busy concern making rugs and mats, while three extensive factories keep many of Plymouth’s inhabitants employed in the manufacture of tacks, nails, and rivets. ”

“ Plymouth’s manufacturing industries show great diversity of character, and are exceedingly prosperous. The yearly 78 value of their total product is not far from fifteen million dollars. The great cordage works at North Plymouth are the very largest concern of the kind in the world, employing above 2,000 hands, and have built up a flourishing corporation hamlet in that quarter of the town. ”

“ With such a temptation it was not strange that there were found adventurous men in fishing ports to hazard the loading of vessels with dry fish, and disregarding embargo penalties of our own government, surreptitiously depart “for the West Indies and a market.”
Plymouth was not lacking in this sort of enterprise, and the writer proposes to sketch one or two of the “run-a-ways,” to show the character of the men of those days who a little later did the country good service as “privateersmen” when the war between the United States and England was fought. ”

“ Thus the ship building industries of the south shore of Massachusetts Bay were established and continued active until the exigencies of commerce demanded larger vessels, and the construction of railroads and the transport [Pg 47] by water rendered it easy to supply with timber the yards of East Boston and Medford and Newburyport. I have no conclusive record to guide me, but I am inclined to think that up to the time of the civil war as many vessels were built in Plymouth and Kingston and Duxbury, and on the North River as in all the remainder of New England. ”

“ But when it was fully considered, and the plan seemed hopeful and profitable, it was suggested: why might they not do it for themselves to cover their losses, and without letting the colony share in it. If their supplies reached them in time, that was sufficient. So they hired her and fitted her out, and freighted her as full as she could carry with the goods of passengers belonging to Massachusetts, which rose to a good sum of money, and intended to send the New Plymouth settlement their goods in the other ship. ”

“ Webster twelve years later, breathed into it the breath of life. In a town, which was in early days within the Plymouth colony, the trade was still carried on, and by this fact the scathing words of the oration were inspired. “I hear the sound of the hammer. I see the smoke of the furnace where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of those who by stealth and at midnight labor in this work of hell, foul and dark as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New England.” ”