Signs, Symbols and Stones: The Portuguese American Urban Ethnic Landscape #6
I could jokingly call this post the “Pilgrims vs. Portuguese.” We’ll focus on three monuments in Massachusetts: Plymouth Rock, the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown and Dighton Rock.
We all know the story of Plymouth Rock near where the Pilgrims settled in 1620. Less commonly known is that the Pilgrims first landed at what is now Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod. They spent five weeks exploring the Cape and Cape Cod Bay while writing their governing document, the Mayflower Compact, and then deciding to settle at Plymouth.
Provincetown became a fishing town that grew as it attracted Portuguese immigrants from southern Portugal and the Azores. Its population reached a peak of 4,600 in 1890. Around that time Portuguese made up 45% of the town’s population and they controlled the town’s fishing industry. Historians have written that about that time “Yankees,” still monopolizing the town’s political leadership, started planning a monument to commemorate and reinforce their status.
Funds and were raised from cities and towns all over Massachusetts and the Pilgrim Monument was dedicated in 1909. (Coincidentally this 20-year period around the turn of the 20th century was also a time when many of the Jim Crow era Confederate monuments were built in the US.) Metaphorically…
