REAL/MYTHIC:  PEOPLE OF EARLY PLYMOUTH
On Display to December 2025

Sponsored by Tiny & Sons Auto Glass

In the winter of 1620, the ship Mayflower dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor. It carried 102 passengers from England and Holland, only half of whom survived that first winter. Although the colonists described the region as an empty wilderness, it was extensively populated. The Wampanoag people were living on the lands that they had called home for thousands of years. They had recently survived a devastating plague that afflicted Indigenous settlements from Maine to Cape Cod.

The narrative of early Plymouth has inspired many of America’s founding mythologies. What do we know of the real people who lived this history? Through powerful personal biographies, Real/Mythic examines what is known and unknown about Plymouth’s complex and often surprising story.