Plymouth Rock is a boulder in Plymouth, Massachusetts, which was claimed to have been at the site where the Mayflower Pilgrims landed to found Plymouth Colony in December 1620. The Pilgrims did not refer to Plymouth Rock in any of their writings; the first known written reference to the rock dates from 1715 when it was described in the town boundary records as "a great rock". The first documented claim of Plymouth Rock as the landing place of the Pilgrims was made by 94-year-old Thomas Faunce in 1741, 121 years after the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth.