PLYMOUTH, a town of Massachusetts, U.S.A., 37 m. S.E. of Boston, on Plymouth bay; a port of entry and the county seat of Plymouth county. It is served by the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroad, and in summer by steamers to Boston. Pop. (1920) 13,045; in 1930 it was 13,042. Visitors to the number of many thousands are brought annually by the historic interest of the town and its attractions as a summer resort. The modern town has important manufacturing industries (notably the largest cordage works in the world, with its own steamers bringing cargoes of sisal fibre from Yucatan) and its aggregate factory output in 1927 was valued at $22,756,988. Cranberry culture, herring fisheries and the propagation of clams and brook trout are also important industries.
Plymouth was the landing-place of the Pilgrims and the first permanent settlement by Europeans in New England. Plymouth Rock, the granite boulder on which the Pilgrims stepped from the shallop of the "Mayflower" on Dec. 21, 162o, was placed in 1920 on the spot it originally occupied, under a protecting portico of granite, presented by the Society of Colonial Dames, and this part of the water front has been made a part of the State park system. Rising behind the Rock is Cole's Hill, where during their terrible first winter in America the Pilgrims buried half their number, levelling the graves and sowing them with grain in the spring to conceal their losses from the Indians. Burial Hill
(the site of the first fort and of a watch-tower) contains the graves of William Bradford and others of the original Pilgrims, tliough the oldest stone is dated 1681. In the Registry building are the original records of Plymouth Colony, the will of Myles Standish, the original patent of Jan. 23, 163o, and many other interesting historical documents. Pilgrim hall, a large stone build ing erected in 1824, houses a rich collection of relics of the Pil grims and of early colonial times. The oldest house still standing (the Crowe house) was built in 1664, and many others antedate the Revolution. In the northern part of the town is the National Monument to the Forefathers (of Maine granite), designed by Hammatt Billings, which was dedicated on Aug. 1, 1889, 3o years after the cornerstone was laid. Plymouth dates its founding from the landing of the Pilgrims. It was never incorporated as a town, but in 1633 the general court of the Colony recognized it as such by ordering that "the chiefe government be tyed to the towne of Plymouth." It remained the seat of government until 1692, when Plymouth Colony was united to Massachusetts Bay.