FOREFATHER'S DAY. 



THE THIRD MONDAY OE DECEMBER, the night of the 



7 O 



Regular Meeting of the Institute, falling this year on the 

 19th day of the month, the eve of the landing at Plymouth, 

 the hour was naturally devoted to the Pilgrims, and topics 

 germane to their landing. In this connection a letter was 

 read from the late Thomas Spencer of England, once an 

 early friend and curator, and afterwards a lifelong corre- 

 sponding member of the Institute, giving an account of a 

 visit made by him to Scrooby, the English home of the 

 Pilgrims, in the year 1869. l 



Some comments were elicited from gentlemen present, 

 befitting the season and the theme, and tracing the early 

 relations established and maintained between the Bay col- 

 ony and our South Shore neighbors, to whom we owed 

 much of hospitality and encouragement at times, and with 

 whom we were always fortunate in sustaining a friendly 

 confidence and mutual respect. While there has been a 

 marked disposition amongst the descendants of the Puri- 

 tans to claim the lion's share of the enterprise, financial 

 vigor and organizing and colonizing capacity, which re- 

 sulted in the ultimate conquest and settlement of the tract 

 between Massachusetts Bay and the Hudson, between 

 Long Island Sound and the New Hampshire hills, and 

 while the impression has been repeatedly advanced that 

 the Plymouth colony, well selected and well patronized as 

 it was, could never have extended its borders without our 

 alliance and would have done well were it able to sustain 

 itself at all against the hostile forces of man and nature, 



1 Essex Inst. Bull., Vol. I, pp. 150 to 154. 



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