pathFOUNDERS: Women of Plymouth

A special exhibition, pathFOUNDERS: Women of Plymouth, on display through May 10th, presents original objects reflecting four centuries of women’s experience and multimedia presentations giving voice to women of early Plymouth Colony, including Susanna White Winslow, Awashonks, Elinor Billington, Priscilla Mullins Alden, Hobbamock’s wife, and Mary Chilton Winslow.

Pilgrim Hall Museum’s 2019 exhibition resets the 400-year story of Plymouth with a focus on the lives and legacies of pathfounding women. Makers, nurturers, leaders, and survivors, they made history, though their stories are often untold.

Who were the women who shaped Plymouth? The women of the Mayflower, immigrants to a new land, keepers of family and tradition, risk-takers, and founders of a colony. The Wampanoag women present in their own homeland, growers, culture bearers, and clan leaders who became upholders of a way of life threatened by incursion. The women of every era since in Plymouth’s ongoing 400-year history who impacted family and community through their ideas, actions, and example.

This exhibition includes Women 100 – A Digital Archive of Local Women’s History, Activism, & Experience, created by Pilgrim Hall Museum to document a century of local women, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment granting American women the right to vote. Photographs, film, and oral histories highlight women who impacted their communities through arts and education, family, activism, enterprise, and public service.