Morbid History in Plymouth, Massachusetts

Plymouth was colonized in 1620 by Pilgrims pursuing freedom of religious expression, which they were denied in their home of England. When they arrived, the bitter cold of December had already settled in over New England, making life for the colonists nearly impossible.

One by one, in the night, the men and women who had survived the journey across the North Atlantic, began to perish. Over the course of the winter, half of the original Mayflower passengers passed away.

Fearing that the Natives might grow bold or even violent should they discover how feeble the budding colony really was, the Pilgrims took their dead and buried them, in secret, often under cover of darkness, in shallow pits on what would become Cole's Hill. Obliterating all traces of their passing, they left the graves unmarked.

Their story, however, does not end there.

Years passed. More settlers arrived. Plymouth Colony grew in earnest. The burials on Cole's Hill were all but forgotten, save for in written record - until the eighteenth century. Torrential rains and excavations along the hill unearthed skeletons, pieces of which rolled into the waters of the harbor. Spectators and ancestors, horrified and transfixed, took some of the remains as grim souvenirs. Town officials collected and stored the bones as they were recovered.

Take a walk down modern Plymouth Waterfront and you'll see a large, columned stone structure - the portico that houses the famous (infamous) Plymouth Rock, protecting it from curiosity hunters who had already taken two thirds of its original mass. From the time the structure was built to the early 1900s, the bones of the Forefathers recovered from Cole's Hill were stored up top.

With historical society funding, the bones were laid to rest in an enormous granite sarcophagus some years later. The monument, which stands atop Cole's Hill directly across from Plymouth Rock and its enclosure, is inscribed with the names of the Mayflower passengers who died during the first winter.