Myles Standish - Legacy

Legacy

Standish's true-life role in defending Plymouth Colony (and the sometimes brutal tactics he employed) were largely obscured by the fictionalized character created by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his book The Courtship of Miles Standish. Historian Tudor Jenks wrote that Longfellow's book had "no claim to be considered other than a pleasant little fairystory, and as an entirely misleading sketch of men and matters in old Plymouth." However, the book elevated Standish to the level of folk hero in Victorian America. In late 19th century Duxbury, the book generated a movement to build monuments in Standish's honor, a beneficial by-product of which would be increased tourism to the town.

The first of these monuments was the largest. The cornerstone was laid for the Myles Standish Monument in Duxbury in 1872 with a crowd of ten thousand people attending the ceremonies. Finished in 1898, it was the third tallest monument to an individual in the United States, surpassed only by the first dedicated Washington Monument (178 feet) in Baltimore, Maryland finished in 1829 and the Washington Monument (555 feet) in Washington, D.C. dedicated in 1885. At the top of the monument, which is 116 feet (35 m) overall, stands a 14-foot (4.3 m) statue of Standish.

A second, smaller monument was placed over the alleged site of Myles Standish's grave in 1893. Two exhumations of Standish's remains were undertaken in 1889 and 1891 to determine the location of the Captain's resting place. A third exhumation took place in 1930 to place Standish's remains in a hermetically sealed chamber beneath the grave-site monument.

The site of Myles Standish's house, revealing only a slight depression in the ground where the cellar hole was, is now a small park owned and maintained by the town of Duxbury.

Standish, Maine, is named for the Captain, as well as the neighborhood of Standish, Minneapolis. At least two forts were named after Standish—an earthen fort on Plymouth's Saquish Neck built during the American Civil War and a larger cement fort built on Lovells Island in Boston Harbor in 1895. Both forts are now abandoned.