Our Homage

We have come to this Rock, to record here our homage for our Pilgrim Fathers; our sympathy in their sufferings; our gratitude for their labours; our admiration of their virtues; our veneration for their piety; and our attachment to those principles of civil and religious liberty, which they encountered the dangers of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of savages, disease, exile, and famine, to enjoy and establish. – And we would leave here, also, for the generations which are rising up rapidly to fill our places, some proof, that we have endeavored to transmit the great inheritance unimpaired; that in our estimate of public principles, and private virtue; in our veneration of religion and piety; in our devotion to civil and religious liberty; in our regard to whatever advances human knowledge, or improves human happiness, we are not altogether unworthy of our origin... ~Daniel Webster

(1820) 

 Source

The Pilgrims: a simple people, inspired by an ardent faith in God, a dauntless courage in danger, a boundless resourcefulness in the face of difficulties, an impregnable fortitude in adversity: thus they have in some measure become the spiritual ancestors of all Americans.  ~Samuel Eliot Morison, mid 20th Century 

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The Pilgrims Came

 by Annette Wynne

The Pilgrims came across the sea, And never thought of you and me; And yet it's very strange the way We think of them Thanksgiving day. We tell their story, old and true Of how they sailed across the blue, And found a new land to be free And built their homes quite near the sea. Every child knows well the tale Of how they bravely turned the sail And journeyed many a day and night, To worship God as they thought right. Source Wishing you a blessed Thanksgiving!