Plymouth Tercentenary Photos now online

TercentenaryWNow online: our Plymouth Tercentenary Photograph Collection of 159 historical photographs from 1920 and 1921 commemorating the 300th anniversary of the arrival of the Pilgrims.  The photos, all taken by local photographer Edward P. McLaughlin,  include scenes from the height of the celebration on August 1, 1921, when numerous dignitaries including President Warren G. Harding and a crowd estimated at 100,000 gathered to view a grand Parade and an outdoor pageant enacting the Pilgrims’ history. That evening, the President also was a spectator at an enactment of the “Pilgrim Spirit Pageant”,  a dramatization of Pilgrim history, of which there are multiple photographs.  There are also several views of the many memorials erected at the time, including scenes of the waterfront from 1920 prior to the construction of the new portico for Plymouth Rock.

The digitization of these photographs was federally funded with a grant from the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) through the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and administered by the Boston Public Library in partnership with the Digital Commonwealth. Through this program, the Library has also been able to make available digital copies of the Annual Town Reports, Plymouth High School Yearbooks (now updated through the year 2014), as well as publications of the Plymouth Library Corporation, including Beyond Plymouth Rock, Vols. I and II and Burial Hill in the 1990s.

Posted in History/Genealogy, Premium Resources.