# Did the Plymouth colony quarrel over whether to build a road into the Wilderness? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 17, 2005, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902 "2005-07-17T21:09:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2005, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/1 "2005-07-17T21:09:48Z")
I heard the following story today (it was a sermon illustration in church, if you must know), something I had never heard before: > [@](#): > > A year after the Pilgrim Fathers settled at Plymouth, they quarreled over whether or not they should build a road five miles into the wilderness, deciding eventually not to. The idea boggles the mind: they’re barely surviving, on the brink of starvation, and some fathead wants to build a friggin’ road. It all sounds so plausible, ya know? Exactly the sort of thing that some not-strongly-connected-to-reality person would think was a Good Idea, “stake our claim to this land”, etc., and I could just see it being proposed at a Pilgrim committee meeting. However, this comes from a source who is chronically, and monumentally, details-challenged, having a proven fondness for ULs and fascinatingly mis-remembered factoids, and so I was, like, “Umm…” However, I am curious, and, not wishing to wade through many-many books of Colonial History, I thought I’d come in here. Ring any bells with any history buffs? ---
**Author:** ![Jake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jake)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2005, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/2 "2005-07-17T21:42:02Z")
There are always those, (Myself included) who want to expand their horizions. Maybe for better land? Perhaps some folks just wanted to get away from other folks. If they were on the brink of starvation what’s more natural than to go out and seek better farming or hunting? Just a WAG. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2005, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/3 "2005-07-17T21:55:10Z")
Total UL is my guess. Roads are huge amounts of work. They only make sense if they connect two places with heavy traffic between them. But there wasn’t another place like that within a year of the Pilgrims landing. The Indians would surely have paths of various sorts to get from one village to another, but they wouldn’t need a road. They walked everywhere on land for one thing. So did the Pilgrims, who didn’t bring along any horses on the Mayflower. So, no horses, no buggies, no carts, no transport. What would the road be for? This notion is a non-starter, from somebody who apparently doesn’t know the first thing about history. Like **Jake**. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![jnglmassiv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f07891/32.png) [@jnglmassiv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jnglmassiv)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2005, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/4 "2005-07-17T21:58:42Z")
Maybe ‘road’ is being used in the ‘narrow trail hacked into the brush’ sense? ---
**Author:** ![VernWinterbottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/c67d28/32.png) [@VernWinterbottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VernWinterbottom)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2005, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/5 "2005-07-17T22:46:33Z")
The Wampanoag people in southern Massachusetts had a number of major pathways connecting important sites. The Pilgrims, in fact, used one, later referred to as the “Rhode Island Road,” when they visited Massasoit. Later, lots of these centuries-old pathways were improved and paved. Many still serve as roads today. The street running in front of my own house is an example. It led from the “Rhode Island Road” to a summer settlement by the shore. ---
**Author:** ![VernWinterbottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/c67d28/32.png) [@VernWinterbottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VernWinterbottom)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2005, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/6 "2005-07-17T22:49:38Z")
Oh, and also, a year after the _Mayflower_ arrived, the _Fortune_ arrived with more men. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2005, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/7 "2005-07-17T23:36:37Z")
Yeah, that was a blessing for the colony, all right: [The Pilgrims and Plymouth Colony:1620](http://www.rootsweb.com/~mosmd) > [@](#): > > Part VI. STARVATION TIME & FIVE KERNELS OF CORN > > The first Pilgrim Thanksgiving in the fall of 1621 was a bountiful feast, but the inventory taken afterwards in preparation for winter proved the Pilgrims had grossly overestimated their harvest. The only way they could possibly get through the winter was to cut in half the already weekly rations of food. To make matters even worse, the ship Fortune arrived shortly thereafter with 35 new settlers. Only three were women. They came empty-handed and poorly clothed; ill-equipped for the approaching winter. Bradford wrote, “They were lusty young men, and many of them wild enough, who little considered whither or about what they went.-But there was not so much as biscuit or cake or any other victuals for them, neither had they bedding, but some sorry things they had in their cabins; not a pot nor pan to dress any meat in; nor over many clothes.-The Plantation was glad enough of this strength, but could have wished that many of them had been of better condition, and all of them better furnished with provisions.” > > Thus after a month the Fortune returned to England. The Fortune itself had to be supplied from the scant stores of the Colony for her return voyage. > > Grim starvation now threatened their annihilation. The Pilgrim colonists could only tighten their belts. Many times the colonists supplied unexpected arrivals and distressed mariners, sometimes in large numbers, from their slender store. > > The houses were very small, barely large enough for the families who, despite cold, hunger and sickness had built them. The new arrivals busied themselves by making additions to the seven houses where they were quartered. > > From the first, the colonists had been repeatedly promised provisions from England, but the much needed relief never came. > > The colonists struggled through the winter, but by May 1622 their food supply was completely gone and the harvest was four months away. According to Edward Winslow’s account, the wildlife and fish were in short supply because the number of fowl decreased during the warm months and lacking the proper fishing gear they were prevented from taking advantage of the abundance of cod in the area… Winslow stated, “And indeed, had we not been in a place where divers sorts of shell fish may be taken with the hand, we must have perished.” > > In desperation, Winslow was sent 150 miles up the Maine coast to buy, beg or borrow whatever provisions the English ships there could spare. All who were asked gave what they could and not one would accept payment of any kind. > > By the time Winslow returned, the settlers were literally starving. The provisions were a godsend but there were many mouths to feed; when rationed out, each person received only 1/4 lb. of bread a day. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2005, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/8 "2005-07-18T15:04:15Z")
Well, yeah, I agree that the idea of an infant colony devoting time, labor, and materials to clearing and building an actual road five miles into Nowhere would be a complete non-starter, but I’m not asking whether it was a dumb idea, I’m asking whether in fact someone in the early years of the Colony did in fact seriously propose doing such a thing, and whether in fact the idea was eventually shot down by the other members. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2005, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/9 "2005-07-18T15:09:46Z")
Dang, sorry, this all got left out. :mad: > [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > Total UL is my guess. > > Roads are huge amounts of work. They only make sense if they connect two places with heavy traffic between them. But there wasn’t another place like that within a year of the Pilgrims landing. > > The Indians would surely have paths of various sorts to get from one village to another, but they wouldn’t need a road. They walked everywhere on land for one thing. So did the Pilgrims, who didn’t bring along any horses on the Mayflower. > > So, no horses, no buggies, no carts, no transport. What would the road be for? > > This notion is a non-starter, from somebody who apparently doesn’t know the first thing about history. Like **Jake**. 😃 But see, you’re thinking like a Sensible Person, not like a clueless middle-class gentlemen who had never worked with his hands and who thought he was gonna help found a New Jerusalem apparently by God’s Will alone. I have no trouble at all seeing some Empire Builder get up at an early committee meeting and propose that in order to stake their claim and help civilize these godforsaken natives, they build a Proper Road. And it doesn’t have to “go” anywhere in particular, since it would just be for show, for purposes of collective ego-satisfying. But whoever proposed it may have suggested that of course that would be the direction that future expansion would be going… ---
**Author:** ![bradministrator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a698b9/32.png) [@bradministrator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bradministrator)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2005, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/10 "2005-07-18T18:37:01Z")
Pilgrim 1: “Where does this road you’ve propsed go?” Pilgrim 2: “That’s the beauty of it… it doesn’t _go_ anywhere!” ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2005, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/11 "2005-07-18T20:43:12Z")
> [@Duck Duck Goose](#): > > But see, you’re thinking like a Sensible Person, not like a clueless middle-class gentlemen who had never worked with his hands and who thought he was gonna help found a New Jerusalem apparently by God’s Will alone. I have no trouble at all seeing some Empire Builder get up at an early committee meeting and propose that in order to stake their claim and help civilize these godforsaken natives, they build a Proper Road. And it doesn’t have to “go” anywhere in particular, since it would just be for show, for purposes of collective ego-satisfying. But whoever proposed it may have suggested that of course that would be the direction that future expansion would be going… Where’s my long response to this that I posted earlier? Darn hamsters. Anyway, I said something to the effect that I find this scenario impossible to imagine. And one that I’ve never read or heard of in all this time. I suppose somebody could have proposed it, and if you wanted to search you would need to do is to go through, line by line, all the official records and all the individual diaries. But, c’mon. The colony was starving and needed every person working all the time just to stay alive. The Pilgrims weren’t gentlemen and they weren’t even middle class. I’m not sure they were the type of sect that were deep into the New Jerusalem and showing off for god, either. Totally empty gestures weren’t what they were about. I can’t prove it didn’t happen. But it sure sounds exactly like a story to me. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2005, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/12 "2005-07-18T21:10:29Z")
> [@Exapno Mapcase](#): > > But, c’mon. The colony was starving and needed every person working all the time just to stay alive. The Pilgrims weren’t gentlemen and they weren’t even middle class. I’m not sure they were the type of sect that were deep into the New Jerusalem and showing off for god, either. Totally empty gestures weren’t what they were about. Right. The early inhabitants of Plymouth were primarily working class. (William Bradford, who became governor after the old governor died, had been a clothworker in England) They also didn’t want to “civilize the godforsaken natives”. They were terrified of them, and attitudes ranged from “wipe them out” to “pray they don’t wipe us out”. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2005, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/13 "2005-07-18T21:13:05Z")
It’s more likely it was something the settlers of Massachussets would do…but I don’t have any knowledge that they did it either. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2005, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/14 "2005-07-18T21:17:11Z")
> [@](#): > > not like a clueless middle-class gentlemen who had never worked with his hands and who thought he was gonna help found a New Jerusalem apparently by God’s Will alone But now you are confusing the Plymouth settlement with Jamestown. Of the 101 original settlers on the Mayflower, none were gentry and only about one third of them were religious Separatists. The majority of the people aboard were working folk recruited to build a colony. (That is why, in recent years, the view of the Mayflower Compact has shifted among some people from “first democratic document of the New World” to “theocratic power grab,” since it shifted power from _all_ the settlers to favor the rules of the Separatists. Whether or not this new view of that document is accurate, the view that anyone on the Mayflower expected to be idle is inaccurate.) Without addressing the issue of whether there was an idiotic earlier proposal, [this hard-to-read site](http://www.marshfield.net/History/mar1.htm) claims that the first road was built twelve years after landing to connect Plymouth to the newly established village of Marshfield. ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2005, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/15 "2005-07-18T21:44:07Z")
It could have happened. Heck, the city in which I used to live nearly had to lay off all the school nurses in the district, but plowed ahead with a soccer stadium. Compared to that, the PIlgrims would look wise building a road into the wilderness. . ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2005, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/16 "2005-07-18T22:07:01Z")
> [@bradministrator](#): > > Pilgrim 1: “Where does this road you’ve propsed go?” > > Pilgrim 2: “That’s the beauty of it… it doesn’t _go_ anywhere!” Maybe one of them was a money launderer! [Real life example of a road that doesn’t go anywhere](http://www.tni.org/drugs-docs/drugmone.htm). ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2005, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/17 "2005-07-18T22:11:59Z")
> [@saoirse](#): > > It could have happened. Heck, the city in which I used to live nearly had to lay off all the school nurses in the district, but plowed ahead with a soccer stadium. Compared to that, the PIlgrims would look wise building a road into the wilderness. > . The Pilgrims didn’t live in a society in which governments had to deal with totally different sources of money which by law could not be used for any purpose other than the one specified. And it will probably take another 385 years to get today’s people to understand this. ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2005, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/18 "2005-07-19T02:57:39Z")
Well, Tom~ was my final hope, and if **he** never heard of the incident in question, then chalk up another one for my pastor the Walking Inboxer Rebellion, I guess. 😃 Thanks, all. ---
**Author:** ![Ignatz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3be4f8/32.png) [@Ignatz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignatz)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2005, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/19 "2005-07-20T00:08:38Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > \ Without addressing the issue of whether there was an idiotic earlier proposal, [this hard-to-read site](http://www.marshfield.net/History/mar1.htm) claims that the first road was built twelve years after landing to connect Plymouth to the newly established village of Marshfield. As for the "hard-to-read"ness, Tomanddeb,I copied and pasted it into Word and the green background disappeared = quite readable. Another historical cite: In Page, Logan Waller, _Roads, Paths and Bridges_-The Farmer’s Practical Library, New York, Sturgis & Walton Co., 1912, pages 30 and 31, in a chapter entitled “Early Road Work in the United States”, it states: “The first American road law was passed by the House of Burgesses in Virginia in1632. So far as can be ascertained, the first American road built by white men was at Jamestown a few years later.” “In the North the so-called New England Path, between Boston and Plymouth, was begun in 1639.” ---
**Author:** ![Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/50afbb/32.png) [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2005, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-plymouth-colony-quarrel-over-whether-to-build-a-road-into-the-wilderness/312902/20 "2005-07-20T13:51:00Z")
Belated thanks for copying that all out. 🙂 It’s possible that there really were early colonists somewhere who quarreled over building a road, and so Pastor’s factoid might have originally gone, “The year after **Jamestown** was started, they quarreled over building a road into the wilderness.” That would make more sense, actually, and it would make sense that he got hold of the wrong end of the stick (which happens frequently with him) and attributed it to the Pilgrims. It was supposed to be a sermon illustration for “losing your passion”, in that these colonists (whoever they were), after they’d gone to all this trouble to emigrate, “only a year later!” couldn’t muster up the oomph to build a puny five-mile road (and yes I know his basic assumptions here show that he doesn’t “get” the economic and historical realities of the colonial period–there’s a lot of stuff he doesn’t “get”). Well, next time I’m at the library I’ll look for a Big Book Of Colonial History.