Cole’s Hill

Rising steeply above Plymouth’s waterfront, Cole’s Hill was the colony’s first burial ground. During the devastating winter of 1620–1621, nearly half of the Mayflower’s passengers died from disease, exposure, and the effects of their difficult voyage. Many were buried here in graves overlooking the harbor where their ship remained anchored.

According to tradition, the settlers leveled the graves and planted grain over them so that outsiders would not know how severely their numbers had been reduced. The burials were not marked with permanent stones, and the individual locations were eventually lost. Among those believed to have been buried on the hill were Plymouth’s first governor, John Carver; his wife, Katherine; Rose Standish; William Mullins; and numerous other men, women, and children.

The hill  took its name from James Cole, who settled nearby during the 1630s and operated a tavern in the area. Today, a long stairway climbs from the waterfront toward the Mayflower Society House, an eighteenth-century mansion standing above the hill. The house was built in 1754 by Edward Winslow, a great-grandson of Mayflower passenger and Plymouth governor Edward Winslow, and was acquired by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants in 1941.

Cole’s Hill is now part of Pilgrim Memorial State Park and is Plymouth’s only National Historic Landmark. Its grassy slope appears peaceful, yet beneath that landscape lies the story of the colony’s most desperate season and of the people whose lives ended before the settlement they helped establish could truly begin.