for binding wheat is one of the principal products. From 1900 to 1905 the capital invested in manufactures increased 83% and the value of the product 101%. Large quantities of cranberries are raised in the township. Plymouth is a port of entry, but its foreign commerce is unimportant; it has a considerable coasting trade, especially in coal and lumber. The township owns its waterworks.
Plymouth was the first permanent white settlement in New England, and dates its founding from the landing here from the “Mayflower” shallop of an exploring party of twelve Pilgrims, including William Bradford, on the 21st of December (N.S.) 1620. The Indian name of the place was Patuxet, but the colonists called it New Plymouth, because they had sailed from Plymouth, England, and possibly because they were aware that the name of Plymouth had been given to the place six years before by Captain John Smith. When and how the town and the colony of Plymouth became differentiated is not clear. Plymouth was never incorporated as a township, but in 1633 the General Court of the colony recognized it as such by ordering that “the chiefe government be tyed to the towne of Plymouth.” In 1686 the colony submitted to Sir Edmund Andros, who had been commissioned governor of all New England, and chose representatives to sit in his council. Plymouth remained the seat of government of the colony until 1692, when Plymouth Colony, and with it the town of Plymouth, was united to Massachusetts Bay under the charter of 1691 (see Massachusetts: History). Part of Plymouth was established as Plympton in 1707, and part as Kingston in 1726.
Bibliography.—For the sources of the early history of Plymouth consult (George) Mourt’s Relation, or Journal of the Plantation of Plymouth (Boston, 1865, and numerous other editions); William Bradford’s History of the Plimouth Plantation (Boston, 1858, and several later editions), the most important source of information concerning Plymouth before 1646; the Plymouth Colony Records (12 vols., Boston, 1855–1861); the Records of the Town of Plymouth (3 vols., Plymouth, 1889–1903); J. A. Young’s Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers (Boston, 1841); and E. Arber’s Story of the Pilgrim Fathers (London, 1897), the two last containing excerpts from the leading sources. See also, James Thacher’s History of the Town of Plymouth (Boston, 1832); W. T. Davis’s History of the Town of Plymouth (Philadelphia, 1885); also his Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth (Boston, 2nd ed., 1899); and his Plymouth Memories of an Octogenarian (Plymouth, 1906); and John A. Goodwin, The Pilgrim Republic (Boston, 1888). For accounts in general histories, see J. G. Palfrey’s History of New England, I. (Boston, 1858); the appreciative sketch by J. A. Doyle, in his English Colonies in America, II. (New York, 1889); and, especially, the monograph by Franklin B. Dexter, in Justin Winsor’s Narrative and Critical History of America, vol iii. (Boston, 1884). As to the truth of the tradition that the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, consult the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1903), 2nd series, vol. xvii. containing articles by E. Channing and W. W. Goodwin; the article by Herbert B. Adams in the Magazine of American History, ix. 31 sqq., and that by S. H. Gay in the Atlantic Monthly, xlviii. 612 sqq.
PLYMOUTH, a borough of Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the north branch of the Susquehanna river, immediately west of and across the river from Wilkes-Barre, of which it is a suburb. Pop. (1910), 16,996. Plymouth is served by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railroad. The borough is finely situated in the Wyoming Valley among the
rich anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania, and its
inhabitants are chiefly engaged in the coal industry; in 1906
and 1907 (when it shipped 24,081,491 tons) Luzerne county
shipped more anthracite coal than any other county in Pennsylvania.
In 1905 the total value of the factory products was
$902,758, 69·4% more than in 1900. Before the coming of
white settlers there was an Indian village called Shawnee on
the site of the present borough. The township of Plymouth
was settled in 1769 by immigrants from New England—many
originally from Plymouth, Litchfield county, Connecticut,
whence the name—under the auspices of the Susquehanna
Company, which claimed this region as a part of Connecticut,
and Plymouth became a centre of the contest between the
“Pennamites” and the “Yankees” (representing respectively
Pennsylvania and Connecticut), which grew out of the conflict
of the royal charter of Pennsylvania (granted in 1681) with the
royal charter of Connecticut (granted in 1662), a matter which
was not settled until 1799. (See Wyoming Valley.) In its
earlier history the region was agricultural. Two brothers, Abijah
and John Smith, originally of Derby, Conn., settled in
Plymouth in 1806 and began shipping coal thence in 1808;
this was the beginning of the anthracite coal trade in the United
States. The borough was incorporated in 1866, being then
separated from the township of Plymouth, which had a population
in 1890 of 8363 and in 1900 of 9655.
See H. B. Wright’s Historical Sketches of Plymouth (Philadelphia, 1873).
PLYMOUTH BRETHREN, a community of Christians who
received the name in 1830 when the Rev. J. N. Darby induced
many of the inhabitants of Plymouth, England, to associate
themselves with him for the promulgation of his opinions.
Although small Christian communities existed in Ireland and
elsewhere calling themselves Brethren, and holding similar views,
the accession to the ranks of Darby so increased their numbers
and influence that he is usually reckoned the founder of Plymouthism.
Darby (born in Nov. 1800 in London; graduated
at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1819; died April 29, 1882, at
Bournemouth) was a curate in Wicklow 1825–1827, when he felt
himself constrained to leave the Anglican communion; going to
Dublin, he became associated with several devout people who
met statedly for public worship, and called themselves “Brethren.”
Among these were A. N. Groves and J. G. Bellett, who
deserve to rank among the founders of the movement. In
1830 Darby at Plymouth won over many people to his way of
thinking, among them James L. Harris, a Plymouth clergyman,
and the well-known Biblical scholar Samuel Prideaux Tregelles.
The Brethren started a periodical, The Christian Witness,
continued from 1849 as The Present Testimony, with Harris as
editor and Darby as the most important contributor. During
the next eight years the progress of the sect was rapid, and
communities were founded in many of the principal towns in
England.
In 1838 Darby went to reside in French Switzerland, and made many disciples. Congregations were formed in Geneva, at Lausanne, where most of the Methodist and other dissenters joined the Brethren, at Vevey and elsewhere in Vaud. His opinions also found their way into France, Germany, German Switzerland, and Italy; but French Switzerland has always remained the stronghold of Plymouthism on the Continent, and for his followers there Darby wrote two of his most important tracts, Le Ministère considéré dans sa nature and De la Présence et de l’Faction du S. Esprit dans l’église. The revolution in the canton Vaud, brought about by Jesuit intrigue in 1845, brought persecution to the Brethren in the canton and in other parts of French Switzerland, and Darby’s life was in great jeopardy.
He returned to England, and his reappearance was followed by divisions among the Brethren at home. These divisions began at Plymouth. Benjamin Wills Newton, head of the community there, who had been a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, was accused of departing from the testimony of the Brethren by reintroducing the spirit of clericalism. Unable to detach the congregation from the teacher, Darby began a rival assembly. The majority of the Brethren out of Plymouth supported Darby, but a minority remained with Newton. The separation became wider in 1847 on the discovery of supposed heretical teaching by Newton. In 1848 another division took place. The Bethesda congregation at Bristol, where George Muller was the most influential member, received into communion several of Newton’s followers and justified their action. Out of this came the separation into Neutral Brethren, led by Müller, and Exclusive Brethren or Darbyites, who refused to hold communion with the followers of Newton or Müller. The Exclusives, who were the more numerous, suffered further divisions. An Irish clergyman named Samuel O’Malley Cluff had adopted views similar to those of Pearsall Smith, who preached a doctrine of sanctification called “Death to Nature” as an antidote to the supposed prevalent Laodiceanism, and when these were repudiated seceded with his followers. The most
