Path Founding Women Exhibit

PATHFOUNDERS: WOMEN OF PLYMOUTH

This exhibition resets the 400-year story of Plymouth Colony with a focus on the lives and legacies of path-founding women. A series of biographical mini-films presents the voices of women from two differing cultures who lived along the eastern seaboard of larger Plymouth and Cape Cod in the 17th century. Makers, nurturers, leaders, and survivors, these women made history, though their stories have often been untold. The film exhibition was created by Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, MA in association with the Wampanoag-owned production company SmokeSygnals of Mashpee, MA, and curated by Dr. Donna Curtin, Michelle Marchetti Coughlin, and Linda Coombs.

Who were the women who shaped early Plymouth Colony? Three short films illustrate the lives of Wampanoag women, including two historical figures, the sachem Awashonks and a neighbor of the Pilgrim colonists, the wife of Hobbomock, whose actual name is never mentioned in early records, as well as an interview from a modern Wampanoag perspective with Tribal member Paula Peters, an independent researcher, author, and founder of SmokeSygnals.

Three additional films reflect the experiences of women of the early English colony, including a film spotlighting two girls, Priscilla Mullins (Alden) and Mary Chilton (Winslow). They were among five teenage girls who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620, survivors of the dangerous journey across the Atlantic. As immigrants and colonists, they experienced upheaval and dislocation, as well as deep personal loss. Priscilla Mullins was 1, and Mary Chilton was just 13 years old when they were orphaned during their first months in Plymouth. Did distressed circumstances bring these girls together?

Primary accounts reveal little of their experiences or connections with each other. As orphans, Priscilla Mullins and Mary Chilton would have been assigned to live with other families. Would they have reached out to each other or helped each other? While based on 17th-century primary source accounts, the film hints at connections and relations that lie between the lines of historical text. Despite traumatic New World beginnings, Priscilla and Mary went on to establish large, stable families of their own, each having more than nine children. Each achieved a level of economic success and maintained a comfortable living by the standards of the day.

Additional films tell the stories of Elinor Billington, wife of the Colony’s first convicted murderer, John Billington, and Susanna White Winslow, one of three pregnant women aboard the Mayflower, who gave birth to her son Peregrine while the ship was anchored off Cape Cod. The exhibition is on loan from Pilgrim Hall Museum, which is celebrating its 200th anniversary in 2024.