Chips Off the Old Block | Knowledge & Wisdom

Arguably the most famous boulder in the world, Plymouth Rock is a four-ton hunk of Dedham granite, roughly 608 million years old, that was upheaved and moved southward from the Boston area on a conveyor belt of ice. For the next 20,000 years it sat undisturbed but for the eroding effects of the tides and the wind. When it became the threshold to a new country—and the emblem of America—everyone wanted a piece of it. And nearly everyone got it. The Massachusetts landmark we know today is estimated to be about one-twentieth its original size, having been chipped away by souvenir hunters, rock hounds, and even town officials. Among the culprits:

• In 1774, Plymouth townspeople decided to relocate their landmark, engaging 30 yoke of oxen for the job. The screws they installed to help move it served as wedges, splitting the rock in half as soon as the oxen pulled.
• In an 1834 Independence Day parade, a Mayflower replica accompanied a two-wheeled cart transporting the upper half of the rock from the town common to Pilgrim Hall. When a pin reportedly dislodged, causing the cart to tilt, the rock hit the ground and broke into pieces.
• The lower half remained at the waterfront, vulnerable to the elements and part of a commercial wharf, across which iron-wheeled carts of fish, coal, and other goods rolled. A local merchant kept a hammer and chisel on hand for souvenir seekers.
• In 1880 the halves were reunited, though by then the pieces no longer matched. Town officials chinked in the spaces with random (less historic) stones and chiseled in the date “1620.”
• Places where pieces of Plymouth Rock have come to rest: the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York; the Conoco refinery in Hull, Massachusetts; the Smithsonian; and museums in California and Nevada.
• In the 1920s, the Antiquarian Society of Plymouth sold pieces as paperweights. Other known uses: tie tacks, cuff links, pendants, earrings, a 400-pound doorstop, and a weight for a barrel of corned beef.

—Adapted from “A Piece of the Rock” by Jeff Baker, November 2000