WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
A guide to Plymouth and its history cover

A guide to Plymouth and its history

Chapter 27: The Pilgrim Citizen
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

The guide surveys the settlement's origins and commemorative landscape, assembling inscriptions, monuments, and memorials that record the Mayflower passengers, the compact, and early communal life. It narrates the voyage and landings, inventories burial grounds and lists those who died in the first winter, and describes landmarks such as the landing rock, meetinghouses, early streets, fortified works, and preserved colonial houses. The book outlines civic and historical societies, their collections and ceremonies, and gathers authorities and textual references, functioning as a compact interpretive tour that links material memorials with documentary records of the colony's first decades.

The Pilgrim Citizen

“These artisan farmers, these Pilgrims,
Steadied by precepts from Robinson,
Trained by their leaders
Who studied their Bibles for guidance,
Shaped here at Plymouth
Liberty’s fabric.
Grappled in small way
Problems of States,
Because of their wisdom
Trusting in God, believing in Man,
Knew not the havoc of Indian warfare;
Taught the new comer
Gain must be theirs
At the price of their labor;
Punished the traitor
Yet pitied the culprit.
This is your heritage
All you Americans.
Do ye maintain it?”
—George P. Baker

From “The Pilgrim Spirit,” a pageant written by George P. Baker, produced at Plymouth during the Tercentenary Celebration of the Landing of the Pilgrims, 1921.