Burial Hill

Burial Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts, is one of the oldest cemeteries in the country. As such, the winding paths at the top of this hill are full of history. Many of the Pilgrims, as well as their descendants, are buried here. Among the thousands of headstones there is a mass grave of sailors from a tragic shipwreck in Plymouth Bay. Additionally, it was the site of the Pilgrims’ original fort.

It’s known that history textbooks don’t always tell the full story of the past; the first Thanksgiving is the perfect example of this. And while the stones in this cemetery still only tell one side of the story, they do give a picture of the day-to-day lives of America’s early colonists.

These are stories of fights for survival, such as illness, falling overboard on the Mayflower, war, and shipwrecked privateers.

These stories are not heard in any classroom and only touched on in history tours.

These are some of America’s earliest stories, written in stone by the people that lived them.