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Jamestown's Knocks Take Toll On Plymouth Rock

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By ABBY GOODNOUGH, The New York Times

Published: November 23, 2007

PLYMOUTH, Mass. - This year, as Jamestown, Va., splashily celebrated the 400th anniversary of its founding as the nation's first permanent English settlement, the home of Plymouth Rock found itself on the defensive.

Virginians have relished trumpeting that Jamestown came first, even vowing to get it "out from under Plymouth Rock."

Their strategy has worked, to an extent: Jamestown's tourism figures rivaled Plymouth's this year, and even Queen Elizabeth II paid a visit. In a speech near Jamestown on Tuesday, President Bush challenged the popular notion that Plymouth was home to the first Thanksgiving.

"The good folks here say that the founders of Berkeley held their celebration before the Pilgrims had even left port," Bush said, referring to a plantation in Virginia where settlers arrived in 1619. "As you can imagine, this version of events is not very popular up north."

In response to such barbs, the people of Plymouth have gone to greater lengths than usual to prove it is "America's Hometown," as its marketing brochures announce.

"There's no question Jamestown was first," said Peggy Baker, director of the Pilgrim Hall Museum, home to Myles Standish's sword and other Pilgrim artifacts. "But when it comes to issues of historical significance, we don't just talk about first; we talk about what speaks to people's emotions. Plymouth is the settlement that has spoken to the hearts and souls of Americans over centuries."

Unlike the 1607 Jamestown settlers, who were mostly men seeking investment opportunities and planning to return home, the Pilgrims who came to Plymouth 13 years later were families hoping to start anew, Baker said.

Ann Lainhart, historian general of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, which still gets about 1,400 applications a yea, added: "Plymouth just makes more sense to more people. They can relate to it more."

Still, the rock's importance is in doubt, a point conveyed to visitors on a small sign a few steps away. The Mayflower Pilgrims never mentioned the rock in their writings. The first to call it sacred was a 95-year-old church elder who decried plans to build a wharf over the rock in 1741 - more than 120 years after the Pilgrims landed - claiming his father had identified it as the Pilgrims' landing spot.

That does not stop a million people from visiting the rock each year.

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