Is the Plymouth Rock for real?

Imagine this: The year is 1620 and you are an English pilgrim. You cram into a wooden ship with many others. Your goal? To sail across the Atlantic for roughly 66 days. Where do you reach after more than two months? You arrive at Plymouth rock in the New World (present-day Massachusetts, USA). Oh, guess the name of the ship you travelled in? Mayflower. Doesn’t the story sound straight out a history book? Well, indeed so.  

Now, the real question is, does Plymouth Rock exist in reality? Well, yes and no! A place named Plymouth Colony has remained throughout history and is even considered the first permanent English colony in New England, USA. However, whether the rock is for real still remains a mystery. However, legend has it that Plymouth Rock is a hidden, large glacial erratic stone in the Plymouth Colony where the pilgrims from England had first stepped upon, when they had come in search of a New World. But there’s no historical record of the same.  

Finding Plymouth Rock 
More than 120 years after the Mayflower pilgrims supposedly landed on the Plymouth Rock, was a similar structure identified near the Plymouth Harbour while locals were building a wharf. It was pointed out by a 94-year-old churchman Thomas Faunce. Experts believe that he may have been the direct descendant of one of the Mayflower pilgrims and hence knew it to be the landing site.  

Locals started believing that it was the holy Plymouth Rock. Fast forward to 1774, the people gathered a yoke of oxen as they wanted to shift the rock from its original hidden location, right at the base of Cole’s Hill to the Town Square, at the heart of the city. But as fate would have it, the rock shattered into two pieces.  

Wait, the story doesn’t end here. The bottom part of the rock was left behind in its usual place while the top portion was exhibited in various areas (including Pilgrim Hall Museum) across Plymouth region over the next century. However, in 1880, the townsmen reunited the two pieces and carved the date “1620” onto the rock and kept right at the centre of the Plymouth Harbour, for tourists to come and look at it. The original Plymouth Rock is estimated to have weighed 20,000 pounds. But what remains till today is a much smaller version. It maybe because of the forces of nature or people carving out pieces off it as a kind of souvenir.