Plymouth Rock

For the chicken breed, see Plymouth Rock (chicken).

Plymouth Rock
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
The present (1920) superstructure designed by McKim, Mead, and White for the Tercentenary of Plymouth Rock
Location:	The replica is in Plymouth, Massachusetts
Coordinates:	41°57′28.74″N 70°39′44.54″W
Built:	1920
Architect:	McKim, Mead, and White, Chesley Bonestell
Architectural style:	Classical Revival, Other
Governing body:	State
NRHP Reference#:	70000680
Added to NRHP:	July 01, 1970

Plymouth Rock is the traditional site of disembarkation of William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims who founded Plymouth Colony in 1620. It is an important symbol in American history. There are no contemporary references to the Pilgrims' landing on a rock at Plymouth, and it is not referred to in Edward Winslow's Mourt's Relation (1620–21) or in Bradford's journal Of Plymouth Plantation (1620–47). The first written reference to the Pilgrims landing on a rock is found 121 years after they landed. The Rock, or one traditionally identified as it, has long been memorialized on the shore of Plymouth Harbor in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

History

The location of the Plymouth Rock (more specifically, Dedham granodiorite, a glacial erratic), at the foot of Cole's Hill allegedly passed from generation to generation in the first century after the Pilgrims' landing in 1620. When plans were afoot to build a wharf at the Pilgrim's landing site in 1741, a 94-year-old Elder of the church named Thomas Faunce (who was the town record keeper for most of his adult life) identified the precise rock his father had told him was the first solid land the Pilgrims set foot upon. (The Pilgrims first landed, however, near the site of modern Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod in November 1620 before moving to Plymouth). The rock is located about 650 feet (200 m) from where it is generally accepted that the initial settlement was built, on nearby Leyden Street leading up toward Burial Hill.

When Col. Theophilus Cotton and the townspeople of Plymouth decided to move the rock in 1774, the rock was split into two halves, and it was decided to leave the bottom portion behind at the wharf and the top half was relocated to the town's meetinghouse.

Plymouth Rock now rests at sea level.

Captain William Coit wrote in the Pennsylvania Journal of November 29, 1775, of a story of how he brought captive British sailors ashore "upon the same rock our ancestors first trod."

The 1867 structure that housed (part of) Plymouth Rock until 1920. The gates were added after construction in response to souvenir hunters.

The upper portion of the rock was relocated from Plymouth's meetinghouse to Pilgrim Hall in 1834. In 1859, the Pilgrim Society began building a Victorian canopy, designed by Hammatt Billings, at the wharf over the lower portion of the rock. Following the structure's completion in 1867, the top of the rock was moved from Pilgrim Hall back to its original wharf location in 1880. The date "1620" was carved into the rock.

In 1920, the rock was found and the waterfront rebuilt to a design by noted landscape architect Arthur Shurcliff, with a waterfront promenade behind a low seawall, in such a way that when the rock was returned to its original site, it would be at water level. The care of the rock was turned over to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and a new very sober Roman Doric portico designed by McKim, Mead and White for viewing the tide-washed rock protected by gratings. During the rock's many journeys throughout the town of Plymouth, numerous pieces were taken, bought and sold. Today approximately 1/3 of the top portion remains. It is estimated that the original Rock weighed 20,000 lb (9,100 kg). Although some documents indicate that tourists or souvenir hunters chipped it down, no pieces have been noticeably removed since 1880. Today there are pieces in Pilgrim Hall Museum as well as in the Patent Building in the Smithsonian.

The Landing of the Pilgrims., by Henry A. Bacon, 1877

In 1835 Alexis De Tocqueville, a French author traveling throughout the United States, wrote,

"This Rock has become an object of veneration in the United States. I have seen bits of it carefully preserved in several towns in the Union. Does this sufficiently show that all human power and greatness is in the soul of man? Here is a stone which the feet of a few outcasts pressed for an instant; and the stone becomes famous; it is treasured by a great nation; its very dust is shared as a relic."

A great piece of the Rock is set on a pedestal in the cloister of historic Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims on Brooklyn Heights. The Church formed by a merger of Plymouth Church and Church of the Pilgrims was once pastored by Henry Ward Beecher.

20th and 21st centuries

Cole Porter makes a comic allusion to Plymouth Rock in the title song of the 1934 musical Anything Goes, imagining that if Puritans were to object to "shocking" modern mores, instead "of landing on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock would land on them." Malcolm X repeated the imagery in a speech on black nationalism, saying, "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock. The rock was landed on us."

Plymouth Rock has figured prominently in Native American politics in the United States, particularly as a symbol of the wars waged soon after the Pilgrims' landing. It has been ceremoniously buried twice by Native American rights activists, once in 1970 and again in 1995, as part of National Day of Mourning protests.

Current status

Today Plymouth Rock is managed by the Department of Conservation and Recreation for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as part of Pilgrim Memorial State Park. From the end of May to Thanksgiving Day, Pilgrim Memorial is staffed by park interpreters who inform visitors of the history of Plymouth Rock and answer questions.

References

• Arner, Robert, “Plymouth Rock Revisited: The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers”, Journal of American Culture 6, no. 4, Winter 1983, pp. 25–35.
• Davis, Samuel, “Notes on Plymouth”, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, vol. 3, 2nd ser., 1815.
• McPhee, John, “Travels of the Rock”, The New Yorker, February 26, 1990, pp. 108–117.
• Russell, Francis, “The Pilgrims and the Rock”, American Heritage 13, no. 6, October 1962, pp. 48–55.
• Seelye, John, Memory’s Nation: The Place of Plymouth Rock, Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1998