Pilgrim Hall: America's Oldest Public Museum
Near Plymouth, Massachusetts
Pilgrim Hall Museum holds a singular distinction in American cultural life: it is the oldest continuously operating public museum in the United States. The museum was opened in eighteen twenty four by the Pilgrim Society, a group of Plymouth residents formed in eighteen twenty who wanted to preserve the actual belongings of the Pilgrims before they were scattered or lost. The granite building that houses the collection was completed in eighteen twenty four and designed in the Greek Revival style.
Inside, the holdings are remarkable for what they actually are. Not reproductions or period pieces, but genuine objects that belonged to people who crossed the ocean on the Mayflower. William Bradford's Bible is in a case.
Myles Standish's sword is here. The armchair of William Brewster, the elder of the Separatist congregation, is on display. So is Susanna White's cradle, associated with the first English child born in New England, and the embroidered sampler of Loara Standish, believed to be the earliest sampler made in America.
The museum also holds the only known contemporary portrait of any of the Mayflower passengers, a painting of the colonist Edward Winslow done during his lifetime. For nearly two centuries these objects have allowed visitors to reach across four hundred years and encounter the material lives of people who made an extraordinary wager on an ocean crossing in sixteen twenty and somehow survived it.
