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Plymouth Rock Goes to Nevada
Plymouth Rock as a whole will probably never be allowed to leave Plymouth, for Plymouth without its Rock would be like Boston without its codfish, or New York without its Statue of Liberty.
But in the cornerstone of “a deserted, shuttered courthouse” in the abandoned town of Aurora, Nevada, lies a genuine piece of Plymouth Rock itself. How did it get there? Here’s the story, recently brought to light:
It was 1862, when Major E. A. Sherman of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, a town not many miles from Plymouth, went to the wild-west mining town of Aurora. There he became publisher of a newspaper, The Esmeralda, and engaged in raising funds for disabled veterans of the Civil War. One day, Major Sherman put up in an auction for this latter purpose a piece of gold and silver ore. The higher bidder generously gave it back to Sherman, to be re-auctioned. Many thousands of dollars were raised in this way, and no successful bidder would keep the ore. So Sherman decided to take the ore back east on a visit home and try to exchange it for a piece of Plymouth Rock.
The files of the Old Colony Memorial, Plymouth’s weekly newspaper, for Dec. 10, 1864, show that Major Sherman was successful in swapping ore for rock. He took the piece of rock back to Aurora. There “it was cemented to the foundation of the courthouse”.
Today the town site itself is a far cry from what it once was, due to heavy damage from vandals over the years, and many of the former brick buildings having been torn down for the sale of the bricks. So who knows where that piece of Plymouth Rock is today?
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Categories: History, Interesting
Keywords: history, interesting, pilgrims, Plymouth Rock, Aurora, Nevada
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Love stories like this.
As for Plymouth Rock… I just don’t get it. I went there not too long ago (for the 1st time since I was a kid) thinking there would be some sort of awe or historical connection. Nothing. The structure it sits in is far more impressive then the rock itself. So, view it from across the street and move on to Plymouth Planation or Burial Hill.