It was, no doubt, the monumental enthusiasm for the Pilgrims’ legacy awakened in Plymouth that inspired a group of Cape Cod citizens and descendants in May 1851 to organize the Cape Cod Association, whose mission was to promote Provincetown as the site of the First Landing of the Pilgrims. Also designed by Billings, the all-granite colossus depicts a soaring figure of Faith from whose pedestal project statues representing Morality, Education, Freedom, and Law. From this summit, every place important to the Pilgrims – Provincetown, Clark’s Island, Kingston, Duxbury, and Marshfield – could be seen. It was not until 1 August 1889 that Plymouth’s second monument, the Pilgrim Monument – now known as the National Monument to the Forefathers – was dedicated atop Monument Hill (Allerton Street). On 2 August 1859, the cornerstones for both monuments were laid with Masonic and religious ceremonies, and in 1867 the Victorian canopy covering Plymouth Rock designed by artist and architect Charles Howland Hammatt Billings (1818-1874) was completed. The idea was met with such popular interest that not only would a modest monument be built to protect Plymouth Rock, but a larger memorial – grand and inspiring – would rise in a prominent place to commemorate the struggles and triumphs of the Mayflower Pilgrims. It would be another three decades before the Pilgrim Society would vote, in May 1850, to build a monument upon or near the rock where the Pilgrims had landed. Its mission was to perpetuate the memory of the Mayflower Pilgrims, specifically with the goal of building appropriate monuments, the first of which was Pilgrim Hall, whose cornerstone was laid in September 1824. With its roots in the Old Colony Club, founded in 1769, the Pilgrim Society was formally organized in Plymouth in 1820, the bicentennial of the Landing of the Pilgrims. Stereograph, courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division Finally dedicated in 1910, Provincetown’s Pilgrim Monument has a story that may be said to have begun ninety years earlier across the bay in Plymouth. What does it take to build a monument, a lasting legacy, to the First Landing of the Pilgrims in Provincetown? Determination and persistence and, of course, money, not to mention years of territorial squabbles and skirmishes.
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