A Granite Giant Who Shrank

You're standing on Allerton Street, at the circular drive around the National Monument to the Forefathers. Look up at the woman on top. She's called Faith. Her right hand points to heaven, her left clutches a Bible, and she is 36 feet tall, standing on a granite pedestal that lifts the whole monument to about 81 feet. It's thought to be the largest solid granite monument in the world.

The man who dreamed her up was Hammatt Billings, a Boston architect, illustrator and sculptor. Billings did not think small. His first design was 150 feet tall, a Pilgrim answer to the Colossus of Rhodes. Then, shortly before he died in 1874, he reduced the size of the monument. His brother Joseph took over, and with other sculptors, including Alexander Doyle, Carl Conrads and James Mahoney, reworked the design, though the basic components remained. Faith herself grew from a 9-foot plaster model by William Rimmer, made in 1875, which was enlarged and altered. The monument was dedicated on August 1, 1889, and it faces northeast, toward Plymouth Harbor and, roughly, toward Plymouth, England.

Now walk your eyes down to the four seated figures on the buttresses around her. They are Morality, Law, Education and Liberty, each carved from a solid block of granite. Beneath them are marble scenes from Pilgrim history: Embarkation, Treaty, Compact and Landing. On the front, the inscription says the monument was erected by a grateful people, in remembrance of the Pilgrims' labors, sacrifices and sufferings for the cause of civil and religious liberty. On the sides are the names of those who came over on the Mayflower.

Notice what is carved here. These are not portraits of 1620. They are virtues: morality, law, education, liberty. The monument honors the Pilgrims' ideals as the United States later embraced them, and that's the idea behind the name, forefathers.

But look at who the stone names, and who it doesn't. The panel called Treaty sits beneath the figure of Law. In 1621 Plymouth Colony made an agreement with Massasoit, leader of the Wampanoag, the people whose homeland this was and still is. The sources don't say this relief shows that agreement, but the word on the stone invites the question. What is certain is that the names cut into the side panels are the Mayflower passengers'. The Wampanoag, who were here first, are not among them.

One irony to end on. It's called the National Monument, but it isn't one, not in the federal sense. It belongs to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and together with Plymouth Rock it makes up Pilgrim Memorial State Park.

Walk southeast, then turn right onto Allerton Street, about 890 meters and 13 minutes, to the next stop.