Flax is spun on the wheels, and woolen cloth woven on the loom, dyed with plants from field and wood; candles are dipped from the wax of the bayberries, and the corn or maize of the Indian squaws is grown in the garden patch, dried, pounded, and cooked in iron kettles over the wood fire on the hearth. From a home like this, the next generation took grants of land in more distant parts of the colony, and became the pioneers of other new settlements; the frontier was pushed onward into the forests, and along the river banks. Thus the growth of a nation was continued. The Plymouth Antiquarian Society is the owner of the Harlow House, and takes great thought and interest in reviving there the human element in daily life in a momentous episode of history,--the settlement of the Plymouth Colony. “In a short time other causes sprung up to bind the Pilgrims with new cords to their chosen land. Children were born, and the hopes of a future generation arose, in the spot of their new habitation. The second generation found this the land of their nativity, and saw they were bound to its fortunes. They beheld their fathers’ graves around them, and while they read the memorials of their toils and labors, they rejoiced in the inheritance which they found bequeathed to them.” DANIEL WEBSTER Plymouth, Dec. 22, 1820 [Illustration] The Howland House The old records of Plymouth pay tribute at his death to John Howland. He came as a lusty youth among the Pilgrims of the Mayflower, and after an arduous life spent for the Colony, was the last of that valiant company to die in Plymouth. His grave stone repeats the record of the town, “He was a godly man and an ancient professor in the ways of Christ.” John Howland and his wife, Elizabeth Tilley, had a large family of sons and daughters to inherit and transmit his good name, which after the passage of three hundred years, may be found in every state of that republic to whose beginnings he had given his youth and manhood. Today the Society of Howland Descendants has preserved one of the earliest of the 17th century houses in Plymouth as a memorial to the founder of their family.