Plymouth Superlatives

1. Plymouth is home to the longest-assembled church in the U.S., First Parish Church. 2006 was the 400th year of continuous membership. English Separatists, later to be known as the Pilgrims, formed the Church in 1606 in England. www.plimoth.org

2. Plymouth was already named Plymouth when the Pilgrims arrived in 1620. Captain John Smith (of Pocahontas fame) had named it Plymouth in 1612 due to its physical resemblance (only in reverse) to Plymouth, Devonshire, England.

3. The oldest Church/Meetinghouse and wooden courthouse are in Plymouth County. Old Ship Church in Hingham built in 1681 and the 1749 Courthouse in Plymouth.

4. America’s oldest Lighthouse, Boston Light, was established on Little Brewster Island in Hull. MA on Sept. 14, 1716

5. The oldest men’s club in America is the Old Colony Club in Plymouth, MA having been organized on January 16, 1769.

6. Capt. John Ames, a blacksmith from West Bridgewater, begins forging the first iron shovels in the colonies in 1774. These Ames Shovels were eventually used to dig the Erie Canal (1817), during the California Gold Rush (1849), at the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad (1860s), and the building of the Panama Canal (1904/14).

7. The ship “Beaver” that was used in the Boston Tea Party, Dec. 16, 1776 was built on the North River in Pembroke, MA.

8. Hannah Thomas was the 1st Female Lighthouse Keeper (Plymouth Light) after her husband left to fight in the Revolution in 1776. http://www.lehsd.k12.nj.us/VirtualCom/mathtrails/MOORE/Hannah%20Thomas.htm

9. In 1782, Deborah Sampson of Plympton, MA was the first woman to serve in a U.S. military uniform when she disguised herself as a man and fought in the American Revolutionary War.

10. Scituate, MA is home to the oldest; most complete lighthouse facility in the United States, meaning it has the oldest keeper’s quarters, 1811.

11. Bridgewater is the site of the first State Normal School Building in America 1846, now home to Bridgewater State College.

12. The F.B. Washburn Company is the oldest large-volume producer of ribbon candy (Sevigney’s) in the world. The business has been around since 1856.

13. The catcher’s mitt was invented in 1875 by William H. McGunnigle, of Brockton MA a shoemaker who had the idea to use a protective leather glove for catching a speedy baseball.

14. Brockton’s merchant, James Edgar (Edgar’s Department Store) was the first department store Santa Claus in America in 1890.

15. Wareham, MA was the home of the first recorded 18-hole golf course in America, constructed in 1895. Layouts ranged from 132-350 yards and were playable until the early 1940s.

16. In 1906, Reginald A. Fessenden made the first two-way radio communication across the Atlantic Ocean from the Brant Rock section of Marshfield, MA to Macrihanish, Scotland. http://collections.ic.gc.ca/heirloom_series/volume4/42-45.htm

17. December 24th, 1906 the first radio broadcast of music to a general audience took place from a tower in the Brant Rock section of Marshfield. Reginald Fessenden played a phonograph record of Handel’s “Largo” and his own violin solo of “O Holy Night”.

18. The Toll House Cookie originated in 1930 in Whitman, MA when restaurant owner and baker, Ruth Wakefield attempted to make chocolate cookies by placing chocolate chunks in the batter without melting them first. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blchocolatechipcookies.htm