The Pilgrims Never Landed At Plymouth Rock

Debunking a common Americana myth

(By William Halsall — 1. Artcom2. Pilgrim Hall Museum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=308115)

Every year, millions of American children are taught in school that the first English settlers to America were Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. These Pilgrims came over aboard the ship Mayflower and were the ones who conducted the First Thanksgiving. The pilgrims were righteous Christians looking for a place to express their absolute religious freedom, a core value in America to this day. The pilgrims are the earliest ancestors of the United States and the people on which this great nation was ultimately built. No pilgrims, no America.

These “facts” are in various states of truthfulness, but the one that is undoubtedly false is Plymouth Rock.

The pilgrims made their first permanent colony at New Plymouth, Massachusetts (named after Plymouth, the city they disembarked from in England), but that was not the place where they first landed in North America. In fact, the pilgrims were not trying to get to Plymouth at all. They ended up there by accident.

There was no grand moment of disembarking when a dashing pilgrim leaped from his dingy onto a prominent boulder on the shore. In fact, many have pointed out through the years that when landing on an unfamiliar shoreline, large rocks are exactly the kind of thing you would…