Pilgrim Hall Museum

Just a few blocks from the Plymouth waterfront stands Pilgrim Hall Museum, another place where the story of Plymouth becomes tangible. Founded by the Pilgrim Society in 1824 and opened the following year, it is the oldest continuously operating public museum in the United States. The imposing granite building was designed specifically to preserve the history of the Pilgrims and the early Plymouth Colony.

What makes Pilgrim Hall particularly important is that its collections go beyond later monuments and reproductions. Inside are objects traditionally associated with the Mayflower passengers themselves and with the earliest generations of Plymouth Colony. Among its best-known treasures are William Bradford’s Bible, Myles Standish’s sword, a cradle associated with the family of William and Susanna White, and furniture and personal possessions connected with several Mayflower families. The museum also preserves important paintings and documents that show how the Pilgrim story has been interpreted and remembered over the centuries.

The museum was created more than 200 years after the Mayflower arrived, at a time when descendants of the Pilgrims were becoming increasingly concerned about preserving objects and stories that had survived within their families. The Pilgrim Society, founded in 1820 as Plymouth prepared to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the landing, began collecting these family treasures so they could be preserved together rather than gradually scattered or lost.

That makes Pilgrim Hall different from many of the other historic places we visit in Plymouth. Plymouth Rock is a symbol, Mayflower II is a reproduction, and the National Monument to the Forefathers is a monumental interpretation of the Pilgrim legacy. Here, we can stand in front of objects that were owned, carried, read, and used by some of the people whose names have become part of the Plymouth story. The survival of these objects for more than four centuries gives us another remarkable connection to Plymouth’s beginnings.