Plymouth, Massachusetts

“ Why have we dwelt upon the little settlement that was never very flourishing, that consisted at its best of only a few thousand peaceful and agricultural people, and that after seventy years was merged politically in its more vigorous neighbor the colony of Massachusetts Bay? Historical importance does not depend on population. Plymouth was the second step in the founding of a great nation. When Bradford and the other leaders had at last successfully extricated the little settlement from its economical difficulties, it became the sure forerunner of a greater Puritan migration. ”

“ J. S. Barry, History of Massachusetts, volume 1, chapter 3. {2099} MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1621. The first year of the Plymouth Colony and its sufferings. The Pierce patent. The naming of Plymouth. "The labor of providing habitations had scarcely begun, when sickness set in, the consequence of exposure and bad food. Within four months it carried off nearly half their number. Six died in December, eight in January, seventeen in February, and thirteen in March. At one time during the winter, only six or seven had strength enough left to nurse the dying and bury the dead. ”

“ Carver Street, once part of North, runs around Cole’s Hill, and connects with Leyden, oldest Plymouth street.
5 PLYMOUTH—THE TOWN
The Town of Plymouth, made famous as the permanent settlement of the Pilgrims, is the county seat of Plymouth County in southeastern Massachusetts. It is 37 miles southeast of Boston and is reached by rail, and by Routes north via the Old Colony Division of the N. Y., N. H. & H. R. R., and by automobile over routes No. 3 and No. 3A. It overlooks Cape Cod Bay and a well protected harbor. Its year ’round population is approximately 14,000. ”

“ In 1633 the people of Plymouth established a fort on Connecticut River above the Dutch post, so as to intercept the Indian trade, and in 1639 they renewed the ancient league with Massasoit.23 In 1640 they had a dispute with Massachusetts over the boundary-line, which was arranged by a compromise, and in 1641 William Bradford deeded to the freemen of the corporation of New Plymouth the patent of 1630, granted by the Council for New England to him as trustee for the colony.24 Finally, in 1643, Plymouth became a member of the New England confederation. ”

“ So greatly were they then worried that they faced another winter of short rations more willingly than they did the savages, and took much valuable time from the tilling of their crops for the building of a fort.
Until the great immigration into Massachusetts Bay, in 1630, Plymouth continued to be the largest single settlement in New England; but, from 1622 onward, there were scattered beginnings at other points along the coast, many of which proved permanent. ”

“ No news ever spread more rapidly. In the New England states, and in Massachusetts, especially, a wave of migration set in, which was as strong in Plymouth as elsewhere. The time was favorable; the supply of labor was just then greater than the demand, and the temptation to seek wealth in California became almost irresistible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Near by Plymouth, if one makes the journey by boat, is a town called Salem, lately set up with Master Endicott as the governor, wherein live more than two hundred people, and within a few weeks it has been [144] said that another company are making homes on Massachusetts Bay, calling the place Charlestown.
Therefore you can see how fast this new world is being covered with villages and towns, and we who were the first to gain a foothold in the wilderness, are surrounded by neighbors until it seems as if the land were really thronged with people. ”

“ He was a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and at various times held the positions of President of the Union Club, the social library association, and the Suffolk bar association; vice president of the Pilgrim Society, director of the Mount Vernon National Bank, and the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Co., and Harvard overseer from 1869 to 1881, and from 1882 to 1894. He married October 6, 1847, Mary Ellen, daughter of Thomas and Lydia Coffin Hedge of Plymouth, and died in Boston, February 6, 1896. ”

“ When the Massachusetts Bay Colony was at its full inception in 1630, there appeared the greatest threat of native opposition up to that time, considering its extent. It aimed at the annihilation of all New England settlements, north and south along the coast where they had obtained, or were securing, a firm footing. The older community was to be attended to first.
The scheme was to request another grand sporting festival at Plymouth, natives and whites together, such as had been allowed to Massasoit and his men in 1621, the year of the treaty. ”

“ Andros had reigned and been deposed; the Earl of Bellamont, a good friend of King William and a just man popular with the colonists, had served a brief term, wherein he had captured and shipped to England for trial the notorious Captain Kidd; and Sir William Phips, a native of New England acceptable to the people, was the first Governor under the charter of William and Mary that, in 1692, formally united Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. Plymouth had fought well for her independence as against absorption either by New York or Massachusetts Bay ”

“ Returning home he kept for a time a store opposite the Green, and later conferred with a number of gentlemen in Boston, who looked favorably on the scheme of a Plymouth factory, and on the 12th of July, 1824, an act of incorporation was granted by the Massachusetts legislature to Bourne Spooner, William Lovering, Jr., John Dodd and John Russell, and their associates, as the Plymouth Cordage Company, with power to hold real estate not exceeding twenty thousand dollars. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The following extracts from one of his letters addressed to the authorities at Plymouth, give a very clear idea of the state of the question at that time. The letter is dated Matianuck (Windsor) , July 6, 1835.
“The Massachusetts men are coming almost daily, some by water and some by land, who are not yet determined where to settle, though some have a great mind to the place we are upon, and which was last bought. Many of them look for that which this river will not afford, except it be at this place, to be a great town and have commodious dwellings for many together. ”

“ This charter specified the area of the Old Colony, which, under the jurisdiction of Plymouth, extended from Scituate, considerably below Boston harbor, to Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island, with Cape Cod on the east. Not long after this it included ten towns.
Soon a decided forward step was taken, toward unity. In September 7, 1643, a confederation was formed, composed of the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven, and named The United Colonies of New England. Probably this coalition was in the minds of those who founded the United States of America. ”

“ From the name of the last town they had left in England, the Pilgrims named this, the first spot in Massachusetts settled by white men, New Plymouth. The date of the landing was December 21, 1620, and its anniversary is now celebrated as "Forefathers' Day." ”

“ Direct Pilgrim influence on the religious life, the administration and the courts of the Cape settlements continued from the earliest beginnings at Sandwich in 1637, with steadily diminishing strength, until the election of Thomas Prence of Eastham as Governor of Plymouth Colony in 1657. Meanwhile the parent settlement itself was coming under the domination of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its Puritan hierarchs. The Plymouth connection finally lapsed, for all practical purposes, in 1685, when Plymouth Colony was divided up into Plymouth, Barnstable and Bristol Counties. ”

“ It may be observed that North Street and Leyden Street run parallel toward the water, Carver Street following the curve on Cole’s Hill connecting with both streets at the north and south sides of the hill. Middle Street, starting at Main, runs between North and Leyden Streets and ends at the hill.
To those who have not visited Plymouth in recent years, the transition of Court and North Streets from their quiet residential charm, to avenues of commercial enterprise, will be noticeable. It is the inevitable contribution to expansion and progress. ”

“ And since the justest wars may have dangerous consequences, especially for the smaller settlements in these United Colonies, it is agreed that neither Massachusetts, New Plymouth, Connecticut, nor New Haven, nor any member of any of them, shall at any time hereafter begin, undertake, or engage themselves, or this confederation or any part thereof, in any way whatsoever (sudden exigencies excepted) , without the consent and agreement of six of the forementioned eight commissioners.... ”

“ His life in New Orleans probably opened his eyes to the evils of the institution of slavery, but I do not think that he entered the anti-slavery ranks until after the visit of George Thompson to Massachusetts, and the Garrison mob in Boston in 1835. Among the earliest in Plymouth to engage in the movement, according to my best recollections were, Lemuel Stephens, William Stephens, Ichabod Morton, Edwin Morton, Ephraim Harlow, Kendall Holmes, George Adams and Deacon Wm. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Wm. H. Seward, John J. Crittenden, Nathaniel P. Banks, Charles H. Warren, Robert C. Winthrop, Abbott Lawrence, Josiah Quincy, Judge Peleg Sprague, George Bancroft, John P. Kennedy, the presidents of Harvard, Yale, Williams, Brown, and Amherst colleges, Jared Sparks, John P. Hale, Edward Everett, Oliver W. Holmes, the Plymouth Church, Southwark, England, the authorities of Delfthaven, Leyden, Southampton and old Plymouth, the New England societies of New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Charleston, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. ”

“ These were, Plymouth, probably named in honor of Gorges, the governor of the Plymouth castle, and the patron of Smith’s expedition; Charles River, named after himself, and Cape Ann named after his mother, Ann of Denmark. Other names affixed by the Prince were Stuard’s Bay for Cape Cod Bay, Cape James for Cape Cod, Oxford and London for two localities between Plymouth and what is now Boston, Cheviot Hills for the Blue Hills, and Bristol, Southampton, Hull, Ipswich, Dartmouth, Sandwich, Cambridge and Leith. ”

“ The early records of the Town, as distinct from the Colony, are kept by the Town Clerk in the Plymouth Town House. In 1889, the Records, from 1636 to 1783, were published by the order of the Town, and may be consulted in the Public Library and elsewhere.
All these early records will repay the research of the student of American history.
“But this must stand above all fame and zeal:
The Pilgrim Fathers laid the ribs and keel.
On their strong lines we base our social health—
The man—the home—the town—the Commonwealth.” ”

“ However much the centres of population may change, the needs of men never change, and even if other churches should follow their constituencies to other sections, Plymouth will remain, a living monument to the truth and the life that has been from its origin its power. ”

“ On the sloping hillside of Plymouth, that bathes its feet in the waters of the Atlantic, such a voice is breathed by the brooding genius of the place, and the ear must be dull that fails to catch the whispered words. For here not alone did godly men and women suffer greatly for a great cause, but their noble purpose was not doomed to defeat, but was carried to perfect victory. ”

“ In order to feel the true sense of history,—not a worked-up sentiment, but the real thing,—you have to look at Plymouth, not in panorama but in detail. You have to accept with philosophy such modern phenomena as the Massasoit Shoe-Shine Parlors and the Plymouth Rock Garage, and keep your eyes open for certain types of old houses scattered in unexpected places everywhere.
One of these is a neat old house in excellent repair, the ends of the house of brick, the side toward the street of wood, plain gable roof, stout chimney, the whole thing painted white, and all fascinating within. ”