New England Society of New York

[citation needed] It was founded in 1805 to promote “friendship, charity and mutual assistance” among and on behalf of New Englanders living in New York.

Every year since 1805, the Society has hosted speakers at various venues, including Delmonico's Restaurant, the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and Sherry’s in New York City.

[4] Speakers at these dinners included Commander Stephen Decatur, War of 1812 hero; statesman Daniel Webster;[5] U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, J. Pierpont Morgan, who also served as the 26th NES president; Theodore Roosevelt; Ralph Waldo Emerson;[6] Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens); and Woodrow Wilson.

[7][8][9][10] The bronze statue, by sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward, is a 9 feet (2.7 m) tall stylized representation of one of the Pilgrims, British immigrants to the New World led by William Bradford who left from Plymouth, England, in the cargo ship Mayflower in September 1620.

[9][11] The statue faces westward on the crest of a little knoll at the top of Pilgrim Hill in Central Park in New York City, on a rusticated Quincy granite pedestal that was created by architect Richard Morris Hunt, overlooking the East Drive at East 72nd Street.