A few weekends ago I was motivated by the crisp sunshine and headed to Plymouth, Massachusetts for a tour of Burial Hill. Nothing beats a cemetery, especially a cemetery with some of the oldest tombstones in the country. Even more so that many of my Pilgrim ancestors could be buried there. The Plymouth Antiquarian Society and Pilgrim Hall Museum give monthly tours of Burial Hill. This one focused on the women of Plymouth.

It is a wonder we know anything about the women of Plymouth. The Wampanoag who lived at Patuxet before the Mayflower landed had been completely wiped out by a mysterious plague, likely small pox or another European disease to which they First Nation peoples had no immunity. These women have been lost to time. The women of the Mayflower are more known to us, but mainly through men they married or mothered. Even Women of the 19th and 20th century are known mainly through their relationships to men.

Our tour started at the top of Burial Hill, which offers an impressive view of the town and harbor, and the wind whipping over the top of the hill was impressive as well. Many of the tombstones are slate and in various states of disrepair. Much of the cemetery is lost to time. Many stones are crumbling, so through age and weather, others through vandalism. The ground is literally covered with chips, pebbles and chunks of the crumbling tombstones. The graves of the First Comers (Mayflower Passengers), where they are marked, do not have the original markers, as there wasn’t time nor money to mark the graves with stones. The First Comers who died in the first winter didn’t get much of a funeral at all. The surviving markers are works of art, and walking through the cemetery, you can see a progression in the iconography of the stones. The first marked grave on the hill is Edward Gray, who died in 1681, though the stone was likely erected later, and others were probably buried early. There are several stones from the 1600’s in the cemetery.

The first stop on our tour was a large monument honoring (along with some men) Mary Cushman, the daughter of Issac Allerton and last of the First Comers. She was born in Leiden, Holland and made the voyage on the Mayflower when she was about 4 years old. Her mother gave birth to a stillborn child aboard the Mayflower, and died two months later in February 1621. Mary Allerton Cushman lived to be 83, had eight children, over 50 grandchildren and saw a great deal of change in her life. However, she did not see a huge change in societal attitudes toward women.

Women were the origin of Original Sin, the weaker sex, and could not own property (unless they were widowed and did not remarry). In fact, they were the property of their father or husband, and a husband had complete legal control over his wife and children. Our tour guide told us the story of the Mayflower passengers Ellen, Jasper, Richard and Mary More, which tragically illustrates this. The More children’s mother Katherine, had a long-standing extramarital affair with her neighbor. At some point, her husband Samuel began to notice a strong resemblance between his children and the neighbor. Realizing the children were not his biologically, he sued his wife for divorce and received custody of the children. Samuel, did not want the children, and placed them in the care of three prominent Pilgrim families. Despite Katherine’s attempts to get her children back through legal means as well as threats (I am imagining her pounding on the doors of William Brewster, John Carver and Edward Winslow with whom her children were placed), when the Mayflower sailed the likely traumatized children (ages four through eight) were on it. Jasper, Mary and Ellen died the first winter. Richard lived to adulthood and became a Salem sea captain. Katherine probably never knew what happened to her children.

Because of the non-existent legal status, women did not often appear in the legal record or in the histories of the times, except in extraordinary cases, like that of Katherine More. Sometimes letters survive which give insight into the character of the individual women, or there is some other record that can give insight. Or not. Our guide read a eulogy given for Lydia Hovey, an exceptional, early Plymouth resident. Eulogies were not often given for women, so she must have been a significant figure in the community that one was given. Unfortunately, the minister only mentioned her “benevolent works of charity, as well known to you as me.” Apparently Lydia Hovey’s good works were so well known, that they did not bear repeating in the sermon. Unfortunately future historians will never know what these good works were. More history lost to the ages.

Mercy Otis Warren, the political poet, playwright and propagandist from the Revolutionary War, is buried here as well. (She is also descended from Edward Doty but I haven’t worked out how distantly we are related.) She wrote a pamphlet under a pseudonym during the constitutional convention that advocated for the Bill of Rights, which was long attributed to Elbridge Gerry, published her poems and plays under her own name, and wrote an early history of the Revolutionary War, History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution. This work was among the books owned by Thomas Jefferson that were sold to the Library of Congress. She also corresponded regularly with many figures of the Revolution – Abigail and John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry and George Washington. I took a picture of the wrong Mercy Warren’s gravestone, but she’s buried in there somewhere.

The last person buried on Burial Hill is the incredible Anna Klingenhagen (1869 – 1957). Anna’s parents were German immigrants, and the rest of the children started working at an early age alongside their father in the cordage factories of Plymouth. Anna stayed in school, eventually graduating from Plymouth High School and becoming a teacher. This might have been the pinnacle of her academic career, but in the years after she became a teacher, Brown University started a college for women. Anna attended Brown, but eventually transferred to Wellesley College where she was active in student government (elected Vice-President). She graduated from Wellesley in 1902, and went on to graduate work at the University of Iowa and the University of Chicago. She was active in the National Education Association and the American Association of University Women, was a peace activist in the years leading up to World War I, and travelled extensively promoting peace. She went on to become the dean of the women’s college at the University of Iowa, and later the dean of the women’s college at Oberlin. All this for a woman born four years after the end of the civil war.

From Katherine More to Anna Klingenhagen, Burial Hill captures a small arc of women’s history. The tour was fascinating, and brought to life the women of Plymouth. I’ll be back to Burial Hill to find the memorial to Edward Doty, Mayflower Passenger, and to learn more about the people of early Plymouth.

For more on the Pilgrim burials during the first winter, check out this great blog: Bones Don’t Lie

For tips on viewing Plymouth Rock, see my previous post