|
|
| |
|
|
| |
| |
|
 | |
Old Plymouth in Person Living History at Plimoth Plantation By Carol McCabe
We are at Plimoth Plantation, an outdoor living history museum 2 1/2 miles from the site of the original Pilgrim settlement in Plymouth. (The museum spells Plimoth with an i, the spelling preferred by 17th-century governor and historian William Bradford, to distinguish itself from the town. Plantation was a word often used to describe colonial settlements.) We enter the grounds through the Visitor Center where we watch a helpful orientation film and glance into several shops stocked with appropriate wares, from old-fashioned toys to garden seeds to period music. Then we watch a basketmaker and a potter at work in the Crafts Center, where historically correct materials and tools are used to demonstrate 17th-century methods of spinning, dyeing, weaving, furniture-making, and other crafts.
We see some of them now, clad in high-crowned felt hats, clumpy boots, kerchiefs, and aprons, going about their daily routines. All the "Pilgrims" wear handmade clothing based on meticulous research of their century and their station in life. I'm told it costs between $800 and $1,000 a season to dress a Pilgrim. Near us, a woman holds a trembling sheep while a man (her husband?) competently shears its wool. Down the hill, a young woman pauses beneath a larch tree and fans her face with her apron. Voices call, communicating in antique dialects. Suddenly, we're somewhere near the middle of June 25, 1627. Each day here reflects the corresponding day in 1627. That year, seven years after the arrival of the Mayflower, was chosen in part because of the availability of historic records. The village was constructed using the description written by a visitor from New Amsterdam in 1627: "New Plymouth lies on the slope of a hill stretching east towards the sea-coast, with a broad street about a cannon shot of 800 feet long, leading down a hill; with a crossing in the middle, northwards to the rivulet and southwards to the land. The houses are constructed of clapboards, with gardens enclosed behind and at the sides with clapboards, so that their houses and courtyards are arranged in very good order, with a stockade against sudden attack." Today's recreation of that settlement looks as primitive as its 1627 model. The "clapboards" described by Dutchman Isaack de Rasieres are not the prim white siding boards of today's houses, but rough-hewn, weathered boards over wattle and daub walls. The street is appropriately dusty, the houses low and dark, with steeply pitched roofs. In June, the gardens behind the houses are flourishing. Beans climb, storybook fashion, up tall poles, Raised beds are lush with herbs for cookery or medicinal use; food crops include pea vines whose yield will go into peas porridge cooked with milk and mint. For all its crude rusticity, the settlement seems well-rooted here. By 1627, "The people had built their houses and settled in," a museum spokeswoman explains. Although some of the original settlers had died and others had returned to England, more ships had arrived, bringing additions to the community. Among them was Goodwife Jane Annable, who arrived on the ship Anne in 1623. Meggie and I find her—that is, the young, fair-skinned, and blue-eyed woman portraying her—inside a thatch-roofed house. We come in as she's telling another visitor she occasionally tires of eating codfish, a staple food of the Pilgrims. "Do you think the cod will ever be gone?" I ask, unfairly, aware of certain information not available to her. Clearly, Goodwife Annable considers this an addle-brained question, but courtesy prevails. She answers patiently, her voice sweet and clear. "No, never, Mistress. You can practically walk across the sea on the heads of 'em, the sea is that packed with 'em. The oceans are so vast and the codfish are so great. One fish can weigh 100 pounds . . . Nay, there's an abundance of fish here. You needn't worry about that, Mistress." She speaks of the hardships of the colony in winter. A bowl of mussel shells stands on her table. "We had to learn to eat many things from the sea when we came here," she says. Indeed, Governor Bradford wrote that even when the ship Anne arrived in mid-July 1623, bringing Jane and 92 other adults and children, food ashore was scarce. Bradford wrote of the Mayflower group, "The best dish they could present their friends [from the Anne] with was a lobster or a piece of fish without bread or anything else." Cynthia Bradley, the interpreter who portrays Goodwife Annable, has immersed herself in the history of the colony and learned all that is known about the Annables. From study of dialect tapes recorded in the settlers' home villages, she knows how Jane spoke. And from opening to closing time each day at Plimoth Plantation, she lives a 17th-century life.
|
|  |
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | |
|
Copyright © 2001: Primedia Enthusiast Publications, Inc. and Away.com. All Rights Reserved Image: PhotoDisc | |
| ||||
