Katie Hargrave / Is This Plymouth Rock?
In early 2008, the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts began rehabilitation of the portico that protects the monument to the beginning of America: Plymouth Rock. While construction is underway, the rock has been "encased in a heavy-duty plywood box for protection." As such, the approximately one million yearly visitors making the pilgrimage to the first landfall of the Pilgrims, Plymouth Rock, are unable to see this very monument.
It is well known but rarely mentioned that the first mention of landfall on Plymouth Rock does not occur until significantly later. Nowhere in William Bradford's journals and logs is the place of the rock mentioned. Furthermore, the location of the rock is also known to be several hundred yards from where the Pilgrims are suspected to have landed.
Beyond the dubious history of the actual rock, the shape of our venerated boulder, too, has morphed over time. Fragments of the rock can be found in museums like the Smithsonian, and it was common practice to take a chipping home as a souvenir, as a relic. Now, we send postcards home to prove to our relatives and friends that we have successfully made the journey. But today, when the rock is concealed, perhaps the questionable history can be seen more clearly.
Just a short walk from the portico, several other monumental rocks displaying the history of Plymouth can be found. I wonder, which of these is Plymouth Rock? I have created a series of postcards available at trading posts and souvenir stands in Plymouth of these other, less well known but perhaps equally significant rocks. What would the pilgrimage to these other rocks look like?
In the Roman Catholic church, where pilgrimages and relics find their history, towns traded heavily in pieces of a saint's body that might perform miracles and bring pilgrims to their doorsteps. When a relic failed to produce miracles, its power was lost; if the relic was proven to be fake, as many were, they were removed from view. With the rock in Plymouth having such a dubious history as it does, how have we imbued it with meaning? Perhaps it is through building porticos and creating souvenirs, thus producing a certain clout.
**If you would like a set of postcards, please send an email to info (at) katiehargrave (dot) us
“This rock has become the object of veneration in the United States. I have seen carefully preserved fragments of it in several towns in the Union. Does this not show that the power and the greatness of men lie entirely in the soul? Here is a stone trodden by the feet of a few wretched people for but an instant, and it becomes famous; it is held in esteem by a great nation, every morsel is revered and its very dust is distributed far and wide. Yet what has become of the thresholds of palaces? And who cares?”
-Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, p. 36.