{"id":4294,"date":"2011-11-23T05:38:27","date_gmt":"2011-11-23T13:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carlanthonyonline.com\/?p=4294"},"modified":"2015-11-25T13:11:33","modified_gmt":"2015-11-25T21:11:33","slug":"cracking-plymouth-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carlanthonyonline.com\/2011\/11\/23\/cracking-plymouth-rock\/","title":{"rendered":"Cracking Plymouth Rock: Cold Stone Facts Behind the American Myth"},"content":{"rendered":"Plymouth Rock today. It\u2019s no Statue of Liberty on a New York Harbor pedestal or precious Constitution under low lights in Washington, but it\u2019s the most ancient American relic. Or is it? Excalibur, the magic stone from which King Arthur pulled a sword according to British myth., Legend claims it\u2019s the first bit of land that the first foot of the first of the permanent settlers touched when their rowboat hit the shoreline. It\u2019s an American version of Britain\u2019s national creation myth of King Arthur pulling a magic sword from a stone, but the Brits haven\u2019t a clue where that stone is now. Ours is a tactile symbol imbued with sacred association and for the truly orthodox, earthly evidence of some higher plan by the universal Creator. It\u2019s also just a really big rock. Plymouth Rock to be exact. If that boulder could talk, it couldn\u2019t identify the face of who first stepped on it (they didn\u2019t kiss it like Ireland\u2019s Blarney Stone after all), but it couldn\u2019t forget getting torn from the earth, cracked into two, lugged up a hill, cleansed of its soil, reunited as one, chipped, spat up, posing for paintings, raised on display and lowered to sea level. The Mayflower – moments before the Rock is encountered. The Pilgrims who came to the new land on the Mayflower had no time to spin mythology about the beacons of light from heaven that led them or rocks they stepped on or recipes for pumpkin pie. More than half were dead within months of arrival. The rest were hell-bent on surviving. A contemporary interpretation depicts the Rock as a literal touchstone. Letters, legal and religious documents, and the journal of Pilgrim father William Bradford document the voyage, the land itself and the first Thanksgiving they held there in 1621. No one mentions a rock. Not for a year, a decade \u2013 or even more than a century. Not even connected to a alternative tale, this painting had Pilgrim Father paused against the Rock to give thanks to God. New shiploads of Pilgrims swelled Plymouth Plantation within the next few decades.\u00a0 And once it was clear they\u2019d all survive, grandkids of the first ones to hit the ground were swelling with what seems like entitlement, carrying a bit of a chip on their shoulder towards the newer arrivals. Over time, as Yankee seaport trade expanded and banks rose to Continue reading →<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s no Statue of Liberty on a New York Harbor pedestal or precious Constitution under low lights in Washington, but it\u2019s the most ancient American relic. Or is it? Legend claims it\u2019s the first bit of land that the first… Read More ›<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[34,1457,1518],"tags":[309,516,661,804,915,992,1077,1081,1082,1295,1397],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/carlanthonyonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/in-this-19th-century-print-mary-chilton-leads-the-way.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4a7VA-17g","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carlanthonyonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carlanthonyonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carlanthonyonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carlanthonyonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carlanthonyonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/carlanthonyonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carlanthonyonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carlanthonyonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carlanthonyonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carlanthonyonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}