The current Meetinghouse replaced a wooden structure that burned to the ground in 1892 when the building was being repaired. When the first shock of surprise and sorrow had passed, the congregation quickly determined that the fifth edifice should soon be reared, to perpetuate Pilgrim history. In the meantime, the churches of different denominations—Universalist, Baptist, Congregationalist, Methodist—kindly offered the temporary use of their edifices to the homeless parish. The first service, after the fire, was held in the Universalist Church, on the afternoon of Sunday December 4th. On the 19th a parish meeting was held in Standish Hall, and the first five thousand dollars was subscribed towards the building of a new church.
The movement was taken up with enthusiasm, by young and old, and every society in the parish applied all its resources, towards acquiring funds for the erection of a new house. The whole church was dominated by one purpose, that of raising enough money to rear an edifice of stone, strong and durable, and an enduring monument to the ancient fathers, and the brave days of old.
On the 19th of June, 1893, a parish meeting was held to consider plans of the proposed new church. After several meetings, and much discussion, it was decide to accept those of Hartwell, Richardson and Driver of Boston.
The architecture is of the English-Norman type, and bears some resemblance to the ancient church at Scrooby.
The tower contains a belfry, in which the town bell cast by Paul Revere in 1801, is placed, and which hung in the old church ringing the nine o’clock curfew for three generations, and on the night of the fire, sounding the alarm, just before it fell among the burning ruins.
A memorial window was presented by the Society of Mayflower descendants of New York, to be placed in the chancel of the church, representing the “Signing of the Compact” in the cabin of the mayflower; and later on, another memorial window was place in the north end, by a sister of
Mr. Edward G Walker, representing “John Robinson delivering his farewell address to the departing pilgrims.”
The New England Society, in the city of New York, gave its cordial
support to the movement.The Hon: Elihu Root, the president, in
his address December 22nd 1894, said:
“We have set our hands to another and somewhat different work, somewhat graver in its responsibility and more lasting in its results, than words which vanish in air.
As you all know, in the winter before the last, the First Church in Plymouth was destroyed by fire, the church of the first congregation in New England, of the Society which was organized in Holland, and gathered in the cabin of the “Mayflower,” and with prayer and faith endured the hardships of that first cold long winter—the church of Brewster, and Bradford, and Winslow and Carver. A new building is to be erected. It will stand where the old one stood, on the slope of Burial Hill. Faithful sons of New England have resolved, that the new edifice shall be a fitting memorial, or the noble hearts and great events, for which it will stand; that it shall be shaped by that perfect art, which best comports with grave simplicity, and that it shall express in form more enduring than the words of countless banquets, the fidelity of the sons of the Pilgrims to the memory of their fathers. This Society in its annual meeting has authorized its President to appoint a Committee to take charge of our part in this labour of affection and veneration, and I now announce the members of that Committee: Cornelius N. Bliss, J. Pierpont Morgan, Joseph H. Choate, Horace Russell, and the President.”
The Building Committee held large views of the proposed structure, and resolved that the memorial about to be reared, should be in keeping with the noble history and traditions of the Church, even if it had to be built by slow degrees. They ventured upon a great trust, and as it happened nobly. The Hon: Arthur Lord, Mr. William S. Kyle, and Mrs F.B. Davis attended a meeting of the National Conference of Unitarian and other Christian Churches held in Saratoga in September, 1894, and presented the
claims of the Plymouth Church. A resolution was adopted at the
Conference commending the Church to the general public, and
appointing a Committee to raise funds.
The cornerstone of the new edifice was laid on Monday, June 29th 1896, with suitable ceremonies, and in the presence of a throng of glad and grateful friends, who rejoiced to see the opening fulfillment of their heart’s desire. The Hon: Arthur Lord, President of the Pilgrim Society, and chairman of the Parish Committee, commenced the proceedings with an address, in which he said:
“On this hill-side, rich in memories, associations and history, we meet today, to lay the corner stone of the First Church in Plymouth, and the first church in America. Behind us, rises the hill where rest in peace the dead of by-gone generations; before us stretches, the first street of the Pilgrims, once bordered by their simple dwellings, once echoing to the tread of their weary feet; and beyond, lies the sea, now sparkling in the sunlight of June, but whose dark waters in that stormy December reflects the white sail of the Mayflower. All around us is historic ground. It witnessed the
humble beginnings of a great people. It was the cradle of a mighty nation;
the rude yet tender home of civil and religious liberty, which, elsewhere,
seemed but a scholar’s idle dream.”
This address was followed by a speech from Mr. Edwin D. Mead, Editor of the New England Magazine, and after the singing of a hymn the Hon. Charles Francis Adams, President of the Massachusetts Historical Society, was introduced. He said, among other things, bearing upon the occasion:
“We are so accustomed to look upon all things American, as new, that it requires some forcible reminder, such as this, to make us realize what an antiquity has gathered upon Plymouth. Yet the fact is, as I have stated. When the church, the unbroken succession of which you are, first gathered at Scrooby, and again at Delfthaven on the deck of the Speedwell, or the two most widely read books in all English Literature, our King James’ Bible, had been only nine years issued from the press, while the other, the precious first quarto of Shakespeare, did not see the light until three years later. Of this Society, therefore, American though it be, it may truthfully be said, that it antedates not only the literature, theology, science, and law, of the modern world, but it has outlived most of the philosophies and dynasties, and not a few of the nationalities, which existed at its birth. It is among the world-venerable things. When John Robinson addressed his farewell discourse to the little band of Pilgrims, on that day of solemn humiliation in July 1620, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Harvey, Milton, Descartes, were either still doing their work, or, as yet, unheard of in the world; the throne, Oliver Cromwell, a youth of twenty-one, had not yet undergone his change of heart; Gustavus Adolphus had won no name in arms; Richelieu was not a Cardinal, not a very potter at his wheel, had he begun his momentous work on plastic France. Poland was still a power, and the barrier of civilization against the Turk. We regard that famous victory won by Sobieski, under the walls of Vienna, which marked the culmination and decline of the Ottoman Empire, a so remote, that it seems of another world than ours, yet it happened, more than sixty years after the unnoticed Speedwell weighed its anchor at Delfthaven; and John Robinson had already been four years in his grave, before Sobieski was born. Thus, as I have said, this church has seen dynasties, philosophies, theologies and nations, decay and disappear, yet otherwise to take their place. “These names I have mentioned, are names great in the world’s annals, the events, I have referred to, are indisputably memorable. It seems strange to compare this religious society-a simple church in a provincial Massachusetts town—it seems strange, I say, to weigh the formation of this society in the scale of human events, against such names and such events, as I have recalled. So doing is suggestive of exaggeration, of hyperbole, almost of bathos. And yet in truth, as a factor in human events, it outweighs that among them, which is to be reckoned most and greatest. When the society which is met here today, first gathered on the Speedwell’s narrow deck, its great mission was to bear to a new continent, and there implant, the germs of civil and religious liberty. In all seriousness I ask, was the passage of the Red Sea, by the children of Israel; was the founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus; was the crossing of the Atlantic
by Columbus, was any one of these, a human even more pregnant with great consequence? “Centuries have rolled by since your society was organized. Your pastors and teachers exhorted you in mid-Atlantic, in Provincetown, and in yonder bay, from the deck of the Mayflower; again their preached the word in ‘the first house for common use’ the erection of which was begun on the 4th of January 1621; again, in the old Fort, with the cannon on its roof, on Burial Hill; again in the Meeting-House of 1648, from which a bell first here knoll’d to church, again, in the second house of 1683; and yet again, in the third, of 1744. It is an honourable succession—Brewster, Reyner, Cotton, Little, Leonard, Robbins, Kendall, Hall, Knapp, Osgood, and Lombard—and that the line will long stretch out admits not of questions in the mind of any descendant of the Pilgrims. Here shall the church edifice stand, and here let it continue to stand, looking out at that distant sea-line from which nearly three centuries ago, the Mayflower slowly loomed up in December, and under which its white sails as slowly disappeared in the following April; but whether this, the fifth and most elaborate of its edifices, continues to shelter the church, or in turn gives way to another, the church itself will, like the poet’s brook, go on forever, and so long as it goes on, it will stand in far greater degree than any other association in the land, for those principles of civil and religious freedom, which it was its mission to bring to America. And truly the seed it has sown did not fall by the wayside, nor among the thorns, nor upon stony ground where it was scorched, nor did the fowls of the air come and devour it; but it fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased, not thirty-fold, nor sixty, nor yet a hundred, but by the thousand and myriad, until it has multiplied and covered the land as with a mantle of snow.”
The first service in the New Kendall Hall was held on April 25th 1897, and Sunday services continued to be held there until the dedication of the Church on Thursday December 21st 1899. After several years of patient waiting, labour, anxiety, incessant and unremitting activity, in which the officers of the Church, Messrs Arthur Lord, William S. Kyle, W.W. Brewster and James D. Thurber, and all the Committees of men and women took
part, the completed church building was in immediate prospect. Dr. Hale, the Hon: John D. Long, and the Hon: Winslow Warren had issued a circular letter to friends of the cause, that the money to pay for the completion
of the building might be obtained before the work was done, and when
at a social gathering in Kendall Hall, February 24th 1899, it was announced that a friend who did not wish to have his name disclosed, had given $15,000 to the building fund, the audience rejoiced, and sang the
doxology. The work went on, wand was finished, and glad eyes
and grateful hearts were delighted when the doors were flung
wide open for the service of dedication.