Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1872-09-15
PLYMOUTH ROCK.
Together with Some Other Things of
Pilgrim Father.

The Original American Graveyard
Sunday Divers Relics.-PilSrim
Hall and What is TO be Found There
In-Pictures and Things-Ayles
Standish's Sword, and Mistress Alice
BradfOrd's Corsets.
Ia these days of irrepressible GO s-head-a
Inverness, when everything runs with two
forty velocity, and no man is considered
worth his salt who can not squeeZs the
work of an average lifetime into decade,
It is not little refreshing to go back to tile
times when men lived and msved in the
old-fashioned, cool and frightfuIly method
icaEmanner, that was so eminently character
istic of many of our forefathers. For this
reason the oft-repeated stories of the pill
grim fathers win not readily become stale,
nor will the crooked old highways and bye
ways of the little old town of Plymouth
soon cease to be regarded with very general
interest. One can not but feel dreamy,
Hswthornish interest, walking in little
streets that run precisely as the colonists
first laid out the paths of their stockade.
So few changes have been made that the
minds eye can readily transform the quaint,
narrow stores upon them into the log huts
of Carver, Brewster and Winslow; the
same hills and valleys are about you, and
the wilderness still presses so closely upon
the town that you would not be surprised
should Massasoyet issue from the woods, in
full costume of paint and feathers, proffer-
Ing welcome and the symbolic maize.
BCBYING HILL.
"Burying Hill," says q correspondent OF
the New York Tribune, who has been luxu-
rating In the vicinity OF the somewhat
famous Plymouth rock, Is place to climb
and linger upon, rather for its superb out
look than from any uncommon antiquity
in its memorials. Genealogical societies
and magazines, though not entirely foreign
to Virginia, Maryland, and those middle
States whose history runs back to
GOOD old Colony times
When We were under the king
find in New England their most unfailing
supply of the moldy, worm-holed pabulum
essential to their fungoid vitality. In
every old 7 ankee town much of the inter-
est centres around the graveyard; not the
labyrinthine cemetery,-on which the land
scape gardener has put forth all his art to
make the relics of modern generation
smell sweet aud blossom in the dust, and
which Is the beauty-spot of many q pros
porous village-but the ancient "buryins-
ground" where urchins play untouched at
tag and tsw; where nettles, burdock, and
cicuta flourish the more vigorously for a
yearly moving; whose frost heaved
stones are as much In need of
resurrection as are the bones they cover,
and which, the more ancient it may be, is
so much the more likely to be found upon
the bleakest, barrenest portion of the settle
ment. Our fore-fathers hung witches and
pirates, pilloried trespassers and scoffsrs,
and iburied their dead, upon the bill tops In
sight of all the world; and ground covered
with an inch of loan was too scarce and
valuable for either of these uses.
Whatever may have been the practice of
their descendants, it is evident that the pill
grim fathers selected Burying Hill as the |
resting place of their dead from no sordid |
motiVes-for all the world was before them |
where to choose-but for its proximity to |
their Westinghouse and its lofty and beau |
tiful elevation, overlooking leagues of land |
and sea. In five minutes one can reach its |
from the centre of the present |
town, and enjoy such a prospect as no mod |
ern cemetery commands. Here might re- |
pose the pious pilgrim, his staff and scallop- /
shell (his axe and musket, IL you choose) |
laid by forever, his wives and children |
about him. But here the visitor, naturally |
to find the oldest graves in New
England, looks in vain for the tombstone Of |
the original Brewster, Winslow, Carver,
Alden aud the rest, and discovers that few
Of the most ancient slabs ante-date the /
winged-cherub period of the last century.
The Oldest tombstone that the tourist car
ind on Burying Hill bears the date of
1851; not an original memorial of all those
who came on the Mayfower, in 1920, on
the Fortune, In 1921, or on the Ann and
Little James, in 1923, is here to be discoY-
cred. Now in old Nerwichtown, Conn,
settled forty years after Plymouth, there are
many stones dated from 1861 to 1910, |
Thomas Cushman, of the Fortune, and |
Thomas Clark, of the Ann, certainly were /
buried on the bill, and their tablets formerly
were there. Over the gave of Ed. Cush-
man and few other worthless, the tradi-
lion Of whose resting place still remains,
modern memorials have been erected-a I
shah in honor OF Gov. VIM. Bradford, and
large slab recording the life and services of
john Hewland; but the Cushmsn monu-
mens . magnificent granite obslisk, u The :
-.