![]() The boulder now rests on a sandy bed 5 feet below street level, encased in an enclosure like a zoo animal. In conjunction with the 300th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival, Plymouth’s Rock current home, which resembles a Roman temple, was constructed. The date “1620” was carved on the stone’s surface, replacing painted numerals. Years later, it was discovered that a 400-pound slab that was carved off was being used as a doorstep on a local historic house, and the Plymouth Antiquarian Society donated a piece of it in the 1980s to the hometown Pilgrim Hall Museum, where visitors are actually encouraged to touch this piece of Americana.įinally, in 1880, at the same time that an America torn asunder by the Civil War was stitching itself back together, the top of Plymouth Rock was returned to the harbor and reunited with its base. ![]() In order to fit inside the new monument, however, the stone was given a trim. (Even today, chips off the old block are strewn across the country in places such as the Smithsonian Institution and the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn.)īack at the harbor, a Victorian-style canopy was constructed in the 1860s to cover the lower portion of Plymouth Rock still embedded in the shoreline. The small iron fence encircling Plymouth Rock did little to discourage the stream of souvenir seekers from wielding their hammers and chisels to get a piece of the rock. While passing the courthouse, the rock fell from a cart and broke in two on the ground. And once again, the boulder had a rough ride. On July 4, 1834, Plymouth Rock was on the move again, this time a few blocks north to the front lawn of the Pilgrim Hall Museum. (Some townsfolk interpreted the rupture as a providential sign that America should sever itself from Great Britain.) The bottom portion of Plymouth Rock was left embedded on the shoreline, while the top half was moved to the town square. As they tried to load the rock onto a carriage, however, it accidentally broke in two. With 20 teams of oxen at the ready, the colonists attempted to move the boulder from the harbor to a liberty pole in front of the town’s meetinghouse. As a revolutionary fever swept through Plymouth in 1774, some of the town’s most zealous patriots sought to enlist Plymouth Rock in the cause. ![]() And while it has been battered by time, it continues to endure.īy the 1770s, just a few years after Faunce made his declaration, Plymouth Rock had already become a tangible monument to freedom. It was split in two and cemented back together. Much like the United States itself, Plymouth Rock came of age in a burst of patriotic fervor. What is certain, however, is that diminutive Plymouth Rock quickly grew into a prodigious American icon, and the boulder and the country it symbolizes have led eerily parallel lives over the past 250 years. (And if Faunce indeed was telling a tall tale about the humble chunk of granite, he broke the cardinal rule of American mythology: When you make stuff up, go big-really big.) Whether Faunce’s assertion was accurate oral history or the figment of a doddering old mind, we don’t know. He was conveyed by chair 3 miles from his house to the harbor, where he reportedly gave Plymouth Rock a tearful goodbye. When the elderly Faunce heard that a wharf was to be built over the rock, he wanted a final glimpse. The claim was made by 94-year-old Thomas Faunce, a church elder who said his father, who arrived in Plymouth in 1623, and several of the original Mayflower passengers assured him the stone was the specific landing spot. It wasn’t until 1741-121 years after the arrival of the Mayflower-that a 10-ton boulder in Plymouth Harbor was identified as the precise spot where Pilgrim feet first trod.
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