Cole’s Hill

Cole’s Hill rises from the shore of Plymouth Bay near the foot of Leyden Street, the principal thoroughfare of the original settlement and site of the first Pilgrim homes. It was the traditional burial place of Plymouth colonists, Pilgrims, and others who died during the starving time of the first winter of 1620-21, when the dead were reportedly buried at night and their graves disguised to conceal the survivors’ weakened condition. In 1697 John Cole built a house on the hill’s northeast corner, giving the hill its name. Cannons were installed there in earthworks in 1742, during the Revolution, and again in 1814 for the town’s protection. As shipping declined in the mid-nineteenth century, the Pilgrim Society, founded in 1820, bought and removed eight old commercial buildings to create the smooth slope and stairway that began the present park in 1856, and the slope down to Leyden Street was completed about 1911. At the top of the hill stands a memorial to the Mayflower Pilgrims erected by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. Pilgrim remains were rediscovered in 1735 after heavy rain washed bones down the hill into the harbor, and remains found nearby in 1855 and 1883 during sewer digging were examined in Boston, judged to be European by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., returned to Plymouth, placed in a lead-lined casket in 1867, and interred in the present memorial on May 24, 1921. Cole’s Hill is also associated with Massasoit, the chief sachem of the Wampanoag, who governed a federation of autonomous Native American communities in the Plymouth Colony region and chose alliance with the Pilgrims over submission to the Narraganset after his people were devastated by epidemic; after Edward Winslow saved his life in 1622, Massasoit made a personal commitment to good relations, and he and Bradford maintained a sometimes uneasy peace for more than half a century. At the top of the hill also stand the remains of the ancient linden known as the Bridal Tree, planted from a discarded engagement sapling of 1809 and preserved there by William Davis, becoming a long-known local landmark.

Plymouth, Massachusetts · United States