A guide to Plymouth and its historyBriggs, Helen T. (Helen Taber)
History
A guide to Plymouth and its history
Briggs, Helen T. (Helen Taber)
Pilgrims (New Plymouth Colony); Plymouth (Mass.) -- Guidebooks; Plymouth (Mass.) -- History
The Old Colony Club was dissolved just before the Revolution, due to
the conflicting politics of its members. It was later reorganized, and
is one of the leading clubs of the town.
[Illustration]
The Plymouth Antiquarian Society
The Plymouth Antiquarian Society was founded in 1920 by a group of
women whose aims are:
“To preserve buildings and personal and household property of
Antiquarian value;
To acquire knowledge of their original use, and of the records and
unwritten traditions of Plymouth;
And so far as is possible by accurate representation of the life,
surroundings, and pursuits of bygone generations, to give the Present a
better understanding of the Past.”
In pursuance of these aims, the Plymouth Antiquarian Society has
established and maintains two museum Houses, the Antiquarian House
1809–30 and the Harlow House 1677. Each is arranged to give visual
expression to whatever can be learned, by record, by tradition, and by
the preservation of household luxuries and necessities, of the daily
life of a Plymouth family at the time in which it was built. Each
endeavors also, by the accumulation of notes, publications, photographs
etc., to be a useful source of information on the subjects within its
field.
The first undertaking of the Plymouth Antiquarian Society, was to
preserve the fine old house, built in 1809 by Maj. William Hammatt, and
later occupied for nearly a hundred years by Mr. Thomas Hedge and his
family.
In 1920, this estate had been lately bought by the Town as a site for
a Memorial Hall, and it was necessary to remove or tear down the house
and its picturesque barn and outbuildings. The Society was willing to
undertake their preservation, and accepted all the buildings as a gift
from the Town, to be used for this purpose. They were successfully
moved to their present position on Water St., and are maintained by the
Society as a typical example of a prosperous Plymouth home of the early
19th century.
A few years later, the Antiquarian Society undertook the restoration
and preservation of the Wm. Harlow House, long one of the Pilgrim
landmarks of the town, on account of the fact that it contains beams
and timber from the Fort on Burial Hill. These were granted to Serj.
William Harlow for use in building his “new house” when the Fort was
dismantled at the close of King Philips’s war. The Society uses this
house as the background for a study of the living conditions and
household industries of the last quarter of the Pilgrim century. Not
only is the visitor here introduced to the spinning, weaving, dyeing,
cooking, and candle-making which made up so much of the daily lives of
the pioneer women of New England, but demonstrations are given, and
classes held, both for children and for older students who find the
knowledge of these homely arts gives a stimulating background to their
study of colonial history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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