The Pilgrim Story — the hazardous Mayflower voyage, the 1620 landing, the fearful first winter, the First Thanksgiving at Plymouth — is one of America’s enduring founding narratives. This dramatic saga of courage and perseverance has inspired generations as an iconic immigration experience and was the reason our organization was established in 1820. As the nation’s oldest continuously operating public museum, we embrace a commitment to telling this story with historical accuracy, inclusion, and renewed recognition for histories that traditionally have been submerged, silenced, or erased.

Pilgrim Hall Museum houses an unmatched collection of Pilgrim possessions, revealing the stories of ordinary yet determined men and women building new lives and homes for their families in a new world. On display are William Bradford’s Bible, the only portrait of a Pilgrim (Edward Winslow) painted from life, the cradle brought by expectant mother Susanna White on the Mayflower, the great chair of the colony’s spiritual leader William Brewster, and the earliest sampler made in America, embroidered by Myles Standish’s daughter, Loara.

At Pilgrim Hall Museum, our core focus encompasses the presence and experiences of the Wampanoag, “People of the Dawn,” the Indigenous People who inhabited this area for over 13,000 years before the arrival of the English colonists and who are still here today. Exhibitions and programs trace the story of the interrelationship between the Wampanoag and the early colonial settlers from first encounters through the disastrous conflict of the 1670s, known as King Philip’s War.

For 200 years, our organization has fostered knowledge and new understandings of Plymouth Colony’s beginnings – and never more so than today, during the extraordinary challenges of our own times. We invite you to explore this history with us, and uncover a storehouse of resources on four centuries of Plymouth’s past.