Plimoth Plantation

     
     

 

The Fort at Plimoth Plantation

For the past few years now members of my family have been going back to Plimoth Plantation every fall right before Thanksgiving. Some years our visits have been colder than others, but it's the cold days that, I think, give you some small idea what the original settlers endured.

For me personally, visiting Plimoth Plantation isn't just the experience of walking through a recreation of the 1629 Plantation. There is also the added nostalgia of my childhood memories from my visits back in the early 1960's. The visitor center is much improved and the Native American village has been added, but the English village is still very much how I remember it from years ago. The fact that some of my ancestors came over on the original Mayflower gives even more meaning to the visit.

Those English 'Pilgrims' sailed thousands of miles from their familiar countryside to live in a strange land with a much different climate and landscape. Even with their cannon and stockade walls they certainly must have realized how precarious a situation they were in. If it wasn't for their diplomacy, the timing of their arrival and the aid of some Native Americans they would not have survived the experience.

(Re-posted, with some edits, from another of my Blogs).

Guess Who's Coming to (Thanksgiving) Dinner?

The First Thanksgiving

Interested in spicing up the conversation at your Thanksgiving Dinner? Plimoth Plantation is sending Edward Winslow and Hobbamock to spend Thanksgiving with an anonymous winner of its auction on Ebay. The auction winner, a Cape Cod resident, will be hosting employees of Plimoth Plantation portraying Edward

Winslow, the former Governor of the Plymoth Colony and Hobbamock, a representative of the Wampanoag Indian tribe, for Thanksgiving. The winning bid was for $5,000. The Daily News Tribune of Waltham has their version of the story by Edward S. Colby here.

I thought this was a good idea from the people at Plimoth Plantation. This is kind of a variation of the old question: if you could meet an historic figure from the past, would would it be? A very difficult question to answer, but I'm going to answer a variation of the question. What if I could just choose my dinner companions?

In choosing dinner companions I would be naturally be looking for famous people from the past that I admire and who led interesting lives. I would also choose people who were famous for their intelligence, wit and after-dinner conversation.

Narrowing it down to just three, my choices would be: Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890), Samuel Clemens (1835-1910) and Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965). First enjoying dinner and then spending an evening listening to the conversation of these three gentlemen, maybe while they played Billiards and smoked cigars, would certainly be a night to remember.

Vandals raid Plimoth Plantation

According to news reports, sometime during the night of Friday August 1, vandals broke into several of the houses on the property of Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Mass. and stole a number of pelts, some tools and some replica armor. They also broke china, tore up plantings and burned a book. Employees arriving for work Saturday morning discovered the vandalism. No estimate for the cost of replacing/repairing the damage was given in the news reports.

Every news report I read and the one report that I heard on the radio referred to the perpetrators of these crimes as "vandals". A term not much used anymore, except perhaps by the media, it has a couple definitions. The first definition is that of someone who "willfully or maliciously defaces or destroys public or private property". That certainly applies here.

The second definition applies to an east German tribe of the 5th century A.D. They are best known to history for the sacking of Rome in the year 455. Rome was no longer the great center of empire that it had been before, but this was still viewed as a tragic event because of the culture and civilization that had once thrived there.

Vandalism of public and private property is a common problem all over the country. It has perhaps become even more of a problem over the last three decades. The destruction caused by vandals, who serve to gain little or no monetary profit from their efforts, is usually thought to be the work of teenagers.

Perhaps this is due to boredom or excessive drinking or maybe peer pressure. It may very well be that those responsible for the trespass, theft and destruction at Plimoth Plantation will never be caught. If caught, they may receive little or no punishment. One can only hope that they don't do it again.