The last chapter closed with a mention of the various occupants of
the building on the east side of Main street, formerly occupied by
John T. Hall, and now occupied by a provision store.
The next store was a one story building, which was occupied during my
early youth by Deacon Solomon Churchill for a crockery store, and for
some reason, good man as he was, the boys selected him as a victim
of many of their mischievous acts. They would, after tying his door
handle, throw gravel against his windows, throw a cat dead or alive
into his store, or capturing one of their comrade’s caps, toss it
inside his door, where a good spanking was the only condition of its
release. Deacon Churchill, son of Amaziah and Elizabeth (Sylvester)
Churchill was born in Plymouth in 1762, where he married Betsey
Bartlett, and died in Perry, Ohio, April 10, 1835. Daniel Gale, the
tailor, already referred to, succeeded Deacon Churchill, and occupied
it many years. Further mention will be made of him as an occupant of
a house on the west side of the street.
The next store standing by itself was also a one story building,
in my youth occupied as an apothecary shop by Dr. Isaac LeBaron
until 1835, when he moved to the corner of Main and North streets.
Dr. LeBaron was succeeded by Joseph D. Jones, tinman, who has been
already referred to in connection with Market street. The above two
one story buildings occupied the sites of the present Leyden Hall
building, and the Hubbard building.
After the erection of Leyden Hall building its early occupants were,
Joseph Cushman, Alderman & Gooding, on the North side, and Jameson &
Company and Benjamin O. Strong on the South side. Mr. Cushman, son of
Joseph and Sally (Thompson) Cushman of Middleboro, came a young man
to Plymouth and opened a dry goods store on the corner of Main street
and Town Square, whence he removed to the Leyden hall building, and
continued in business there some years. In December, 1849, he sailed
from New York for California, and became a permanent resident on the
Pacific coast. He finally settled in Olympia in Washington territory,
where he engaged in the lumber and general mercantile business, and
held the position of receiver of public moneys. He married in 1835
Sarah Thomas, daughter of Barnabas and Triphena (Covington) Hedge
of Plymouth, and died in Olympia, February 29, 1872. Two of his
daughters, Mary A., widow of Alfred E. Walker of New Haven, and Ellen
Blanche, who married Theodore Parker Adams, live in Plymouth.
The firm of Alderman & Gooding consisted of Orin F. Alderman and
George Gooding. They had previously occupied a store where John E.
Jordan’s hardware store now is. Mr. Alderman came to Plymouth from
some town unknown to me, and married Eliza Ann, daughter of John and
Deborah (Barnes) Gooding of Plymouth, and sister of his partner.
After closing his business in Plymouth, he removed to Framingham,
where he and his wife are still living.
George Gooding, son of John and Deborah Gooding, above mentioned, was
born in Plymouth in 1822. He was my playmate and schoolmate, and I
may say my comrade in arms, as we were members of a boys’ military
company, of which he was captain, and I was lieutenant. In our
Saturday afternoon parades with drum and fife, we flattered ourselves
that we excited the admiration of the misses in their teens, but we
failed to be appreciated by our fellow citizens, for to their shame,
be it said, they did not even offer us a thirty thousand dollar
armory for our use. Mr. Gooding married Eliza Merrill of Concord, N.
H., and died in Plymouth, March 5, 1850.
Mr. Jameson, the head of the firm of Jameson & Co., came to Plymouth
from one of the Bridgewaters and died in 1854.
Benjamin Owen Strong, son of Ely and Betsey (Baldwin) Strong was
born in Granville, Mass., February 25, 1832, and came to Plymouth
in the autumn of 1851, when nineteen years of age. He first held
the position of clerk in the Mansion House at the corner of Court
and North streets, then conducted by N. M. Perry, but in May, 1852,
he became a clerk in the dry goods store of Jameson & Company. On
the death of Mr. Jameson in 1854, Mr. Strong assumed control of the
store. He later bought out the establishment, and from that time to
this has carried on the dry goods business with honor and success. He
married Betsey J. Chute of Newburyport, and again, February 17, 1891,
Elizabeth H. Snow of Orleans. His son, Charles Alexander, became his
partner in 1884. As the Nestor of the merchants of Plymouth, I make
an exception of him among the living, and award to him a special
notice.
The next building was erected by Wm. Sampson Bartlett in 1840, and
the store on the lower floor was occupied by him as a book store
until 1846, when he removed to Boston. Dr. Benjamin Hubbard has since
that time occupied the tenement in the building as his home, and has
also until a very recent date occupied the store as an apothecary
shop.
The next building was occupied from 1826 to 1832 by Isaac Sampson
as a dry goods store, and the late James Cox was his assistant. Mr.
Sampson was the son of Benjamin and Priscilla (Churchill) Sampson
of Plymouth, and married in 1822, Elizabeth, daughter of William
Sherman. The late George Sampson of the firm of Sampson and Murdock,
publishers of the Boston Directory, was his son. He died May 7, 1832,
forty-two years of age. After the death of Mr. Sampson the store
was occupied by various tenants, among whom were Reuben Peterson,
who kept a hat store, Calvin Ripley, James Barnes, Stephen Lucas
and Charles H. Churchill, who preceded D. Flanzbaum, a tailor, the
present occupant.
A part of the store was set off as a separate room, and has been
occupied at various times by Winslow S. Holmes and others. Calvin
Ripley died May 1, 1874.
The next building was occupied for some years previous to 1852 by
Thomas Davis and Wm. S. Russell, under the firm name of Davis &
Russell, who kept a general store for the sale of dry goods and
crockery. The importation of the Pilgrim plates was due to their
enterprise. The tradition that they were manufactured expressly for
use at the dinner in 1820 on the anniversary of the “Landing” is not
correct. Messrs. Davis & Russell, impressed with the idea that an
invoice of Pilgrim china would prove a profitable venture, ordered
of Enoch Wood & Sons of Burslem, England, a considerable quantity of
large sized plates and two sizes of pitchers. Happening to arrive
not long before the celebration, they were hired for the dinner, and
afterwards sold as mementoes of the occasion. They took so well with
the public, and brought such high prices, that the firm ordered an
additional invoice, which included in all six sizes of plates and the
same two sizes of pitchers, and the pieces have been scattered far
and wide, the market value in bric-a-brac stores being twelve dollars
for the large plates, and fifteen and ten dollars for the two sizes
of pitchers, while the small sized plates are unobtainable. There is
a group of these various sizes owned by a collector in New York, a
photograph of which may be seen in Pilgrim Hall. At this time it is
impossible to distinguish the pieces originally imported from those
which came afterward.
Davis & Russell were succeeded by John S. Hayward in 1827, who
continued in the dry goods business until 1831. The store was
afterwards occupied by the Plymouth Institution for savings, the
Old Colony Insurance Co., and a reading room, until 1842, and was
bought in 1847 by Jason Hart, who moved his dry goods business from
Summer street, and occupied the store until 1856, when Leander Lovell
and John H. Harlow, under the firm name of Lovell & Harlow, became
its occupants. John H. Harlow and Albert Barnes succeeded Lovell &
Harlow, they in turn being succeeded by Wm. Atwood, clothier, the
predecessor of H. H. Cole, the present occupant. Jason Hart died
February 20, 1874, at the age of seventy-one. The room over the store
was occupied at various times by Joseph W. Hodgkins, tailor, Wm.
Whiting and Wm. G. Russell, teachers of private schools, Wm. Davis,
attorney-at-law, and Stephen Lucas and others, photographers. William
Davis died, February 19, 1853, and Mr. Hodgkins died, May 11, 1872.
William G. Russell was the son of Thomas and Mary Ann (Goodwin)
Russell, and graduated at Harvard in 1840. He studied law with Wm.
Whiting, his brother-in-law, and became an eminent member of the
Boston bar. He married in 1847, May Ellen, daughter of Thomas and
Lydia (Coffin) Hedge, and died in Boston, February 6, 1896.
The next building was divided into two stores as long ago as I can
remember it, and the southerly one was occupied by John Bartlett 3d,
as a dry and West India goods store from 1827 to 1846, and the late
Joseph Holmes, brother of Mrs. William Bartlett, was his assistant.
Mr. Bartlett was the son of John and Polly (Morton) Bartlett, and
married, 1829, Eliza, daughter of Ezra Finney, and lived in the
northerly part of the house on Court street, next south of the
present house of Capt. Edward B. Atwood. He afterwards removed to
Boston, and engaged in the grocery business on the corner of Federal
and Purchase streets, and died in 1862. He was the fourth Captain
of the Standish Guards, and our townsman, J. E. Bartlett, who lives
on Clyfton street, is his son. The next occupant of the store was
Bradford & Gardner’s express, which suggests a word concerning the
Plymouth and Boston expresses. Samuel Gardner, a former driver on
the Boston line of stages, was the father of the Plymouth express
business. In January, 1846, two months after the opening of the Old
Colony Railroad, he started Gardner’s express with a booking office
in the Pilgrim House on the corner of Middle street. In March, 1846,
Edward Winslow Bradford, a former master of the packet Hector,
started Bradford’s express with an office at No. 4 Main street. After
the burning of the Pilgrim House in June, 1846, Bradford and Gardner
formed a partnership, and established Bradford & Gardner’s express,
and occupied the John Bartlett store. After a few years Harvey W.
Weston bought Gardner out, and for a short time the firm name was
Bradford & Weston. In the meantime Isaac B. Rich started an express
with an office in Town Square. Mr. Rich next bought Bradford out, and
the firm name became Rich & Weston, being succeeded by Weston alone,
who finally sold out to the present company, the New York and Boston
Despatch Express. Mr. Rich had immediately before the establishment
of his express kept a flour and grain store on Water street. He died
March 18, 1874.
Another express was started before the war by Allen Holmes, with an
office first in Market street, and later in the old brick building
on the corner of Court street. Mr. Holmes sold to Wait, who sold to
Snow, who sold to Hubbard, who finally sold to Fowler, who had an
office on Middle street. G. A. Holbrook ran an express a short time
at an unknown date.
Edward Winslow Bradford, the old partner of Gardner, again started
an express about 1870, which continued until his death, December 27,
1874. Still another express was started by Guilford Cunningham, and
a man named Cook, which passed into the hands of Frederick W. Atwood.
Nathaniel Bradford, son of Edward Winslow Bradford, formed a
partnership in the express business with Freeman E. Wells, who sold
out to Simmons & Torrence, the predecessors of the present Torrence
express. Benjamin H. Crandon ran an express for a short time with an
office on Middle street in the easterly end of the building on the
corner.
I know of no occupant of the John Bartlett store after Bradford &
Gardner, until William H. Smoot occupied it as a restaurant. Mr.
Smoot stuttered badly, as did our townsman, Anthony Morse, but
neither knew the other’s defect in speech. Not long after he began
business Mr. Morse came one day into the shop and said, “Mr. Sm-o-o-t
have you any ice cr-r-earn?” “Y-y-y-es—have s-s-ome?” “D-d-d-amn your
ice c-r-r-earn,” said Morse, very indignant at such an insult, and
went out shutting the door with a slam. The more recent occupants,
Jas. E. Dodge, who died February 20, 1888, Mr. Richards, Mr. McCoy,
Martin Curly, and Manley E. Dodge, are well known to my readers.
The small store on the corner was occupied as a boot and shoe store
by Bartlett Ellis from 1824 to 1831. I remember as a boy seeing in
his store a box of India rubber shoes packed in sawdust, the first
ever seen in Plymouth, having been imported in Boston in small
quantities in the rough state from Para. This was before the process
was discovered of making the rubber pliable, and the shoes were as
stiff as iron, requiring to be warmed before a fire before they could
be put on. Mr. Ellis was succeeded by Ephraim Bartlett, and Henry
Mills, both in the same business, and later by E. D. Seymour, tailor.
The more recent well known occupants have been Caleb Holmes, who died
June 21, 1878, Charles H. Snell, Harrison Holmes, and the recent
occupant, Henry C. Thomas, in the market business. The room over the
store was occupied by the _Old Colony Democrat_ in 1833, conducted by
Benjamin H. Crandon and Thomas Allen, and in 1834 by _We The People_,
conducted by C. A. Hack and Horace Seaver.
On the corner of Main and Middle streets there stood as long ago as
I can remember the Plymouth Hotel, built by George Drew about 1825,
and kept certainly in 1827, and perhaps earlier by James G. Gleason.
I remember the hotel in 1828, when my aunt, Mrs. Gideon C. White
was boarding there with her four children, while her husband was at
sea in command, I think, of the ship Harvest, belonging to Barnabas
Hedge. In the summer of the above year a small circus came to
Plymouth and performed in a tent pitched in the stable yard on Middle
street. Mrs. White’s children were going to the circus, attended by
William Paty, a brother of the landlord’s wife, and I a boy of six
years, was permitted by my mother to go with them. While the horses
made no impression on my memory, I have a lively recollection of the
monkey riding the pony’s back. Mr. Gleason, who was the third captain
of the Standish Guards, kept the Plymouth Hotel until 1830, when he
was succeeded by Ellis Wright, who kept it until 1834.
Capt. Gleason was a portly, jovial landlord, who, I think, came to
Plymouth from Middleboro and married in 1816 Lucy T., daughter of
Joshua Bartlett, and second in 1820, Asenath, daughter of John Paty.
He was at different times landlord of the Plymouth Hotel, hairdresser
on Market street, barber on Main street, landlord of the Mansion
House on the corner of Court and North streets, and a purveyor of
oysters and clam chowder in various places. He was a man of humor,
always ready with an answer turning the laugh away from himself. In
those days the price of a common drink at the bar was four pence half
penny, or six and a quarter cents, but a drink of brandy was nine
pence, or twelve and a half cents. One day a stranger called at the
bar for a glass of brandy and Gleason in the American fashion gave
him the bottle to help himself. To the astonishment of Gleason he
filled his tumbler nearly full, and with a little water, drank it
with gusto, and placed on the counter a nine penny piece. Gleason
gave him back four pence, half penny, and the stranger said: “I
thought that brandy was nine pence.” “It is,” said Gleason, “but
we sell half price by wholesale.” The stranger took the hint, and
insisted on paying a quarter for the extended drink. At another time,
while keeping the Mansion House, a passenger by the stage arrived for
supper and left after breakfast the next morning. On calling for his
bill he found the charge to be five dollars. “Good gracious” said
the traveller, “I never paid such a bill as that before.” “No,” said
Gleason, “and I don’t suppose you ever had the honor of stopping at
the Mansion House before.” Mr. Gleason died Oct. 6, 1853.
A few days after the Old Colony Railroad was opened Gleason went
down to the railroad station to gratify his curiosity, and seeing
a locomotive on a track he climbed on, and while fumbling about
the rods and bars he turned on the steam and away the engine went.
Gleason hopped off, but fortunately an engineer on another locomotive
attached to a train about to start for Boston, unshackled his machine
and caught up with the runaway, and brought it back. “Hem! didn’t she
whiz,” said Gleason in telling the story.
Ellis Wright, who succeeded Capt. Gleason, was a Plympton man, son of
Isaac and Selah (Ellis) Wright, and after leaving Plymouth removed to
Boston. The hotel had a good hall in the second story, which was much
used for dancing schools and cotillion parties and exhibitions of
various kinds. I attended my first dancing school in that hall, and
have danced there at many cotillion parties since.
In 1834 Danville Bryant became the landlord, and from that time
until it was burned, the hotel was called the Pilgrim House. Whence
Mr. Bryant came, or where he went, I have no means of knowing,
but he continued in the hotel until 1840. His daughter, Abigail,
married Horace B. Taylor. It was during his administration, and
that of Mr. Wright, that the famous line of stages to and from
Boston was established, and continued until the opening of the Old
Colony Railroad in 1845. As I remember it the line consisted of an
accommodation and a mail stage. The accommodation left Plymouth
at six or seven o’clock each day, and returning left Boston at
two, going through West Duxbury, Pembroke, Hanover, West Scituate,
Weymouth Landing, Quincy and Dorchester. The mail stage left Boston
at five o’clock in the morning, arriving at Plymouth at ten-thirty,
when a return stage took passengers from the Cape, arriving by the
stage driven by Wm. Boyden, and the Boyden stage took the passengers
bound to the Cape. The route of the mail stage would be one day the
same as that of the accommodation, and the next it would turn off at
West Scituate and go through Hingham to Quincy, and so into Boston.
The mail stage carried two pouches, one containing the through mail
from the Cape, and the other containing the way mail, which would
be thrown off at the various post offices to deliver and receive the
mail to and from that office.
I remember the various lines of stages running every day into and
out of Boston, and I can say that no better horses or better drivers
could be seen than those on the Plymouth line. There were in Boston
various stage houses, Wilde’s on Elm street, Doolittle’s City tavern
on Brattle street, the Washington House on Washington street, and
others. The Plymouth stage office was in the City Tavern on Brattle
street, and there orders were left for calls by the stage for
passengers. The business on the line was good, and extra stages were
frequently required to meet the demand. It was a busy scene in front
of the Pilgrim House about half past ten on the arrival and departure
of the Boston and Cape stages, and Geo. Drew, the manager of the
line, might be seen here and there with a red bandana handkerchief
hanging from his teeth, giving directions and orders.
The drivers were as good as the horses. There were Capt. Woodward,
Granville Gardner, Samuel Gardner, Benjamin Bates, John Bates, Asa
Pierce, Phineas Pierce, Mr. Burgess, Mr. Orcutt, and I think at one
time, Jacob Sprague. John Bates was perhaps the king of the line,
wearing in suitable weather, a white beaver hat, a brown suit of
clothes, well polished boots, and neat gloves. He was no more proud
of his team than the team was of him. After the line was broken up
by the railroad he drove for some years what was called a Roxbury
hourly, running with its alternate mate from that part of Washington
street between State street and Cornhill, to the Norfolk house and
back. He always drove four horses, and his omnibus was not far from
twenty feet long, and to reach his Boston station he would drive up
Court street and down Cornhill. Mr. Bates married in 1827 Hannah S.,
daughter of John Faunce of Plymouth, but I know neither the place or
date of his death.
Another estimable and much respected driver was Phineas Pierce, the
father of Phineas Pierce, now a retired merchant in Boston, and a
recent member of the School Committee in that city, and a trustee of
the Boston Public Library. He married in 1829 Dorcas M., daughter of
Caleb Faunce of Plymouth, and died August 10, 1841. His death was a
sad one. He stopped at Hanover to take a passenger, and in strapping
the trunks on the rack of the stage he stood on the hub of the hind
wheel, and throwing himself back with his whole weight on the strap,
the strap broke, and falling to the ground, he was instantly killed.
There were other lines of stages within my recollection running
to New Bedford, Middleboro and Bridgewater, with headquarters at
Bradford’s and Randall’s taverns in which Oliver Harris, Theophilus
Rickard and Henry Carter and others were employed as drivers. Mr.
Carter, who drove the Bridge water stage some years, married in 1833,
Maria Bartlett Banks, and for many years before his death he was the
Plymouth station master of the Old Colony Railroad. Mr. Harris came
from New Bedford and married in 1835 Ruth Rogers (Goddard) Fish,
widow of Samuel Fish, and daughter of Benjamin Goddard of Plymouth.
Our late townsmen, Capt. Wm. O. Harris and Christopher T. Harris,
were his sons.
The dancing school which I attended in the Plymouth Hotel, was kept
by F. C. Schaffer in 1833 and 1834. There were no local dancing
masters in those days, and professionals occupied the field, and as
the lawyers say, followed the circuit. They would arrange schools in
different towns for five afternoons and evenings in the week, and
drive from one to another, reaching their homes on Saturday. There
were other professionals who preceded and followed Mr. Schaffer,
among whom were S. Whitney in 1828, and Lovet Stimson in 1830, who
taught in Burbank’s hall on Middle street. At the rear end of the
Burbank house, which stood immediately above the present house of
Winslow S. Holmes, there was a two story projection, the lower part
of which was occupied by Samuel Burbank’s bake house, above which
was the hall in question. All I remember of the schools in that hall
is that on the closing night of the term in one or the other, when
pupils were permitted to dance until twelve o’clock, and invite
their friends, a terrific thunder storm set in before midnight with
heavy rain and fearful lightning, which continued so that pupils and
parents, my mother with the rest, were unable to reach home until
the small hours of the morning. In those days it was the fashion for
women to wear as stiffeners in their corsets busks made of wood or
whalebone or steel, and doubtless on that as on similar occasions,
those who wore steel drew them deftly from their waists, and put them
where the lightning would fail to find them.
While Danville Bryant was keeping the Pilgrim House, men more or
less generally adopted the fashion of wearing skin tight trousers
spreading closely over the instep and fastened with a strap under the
foot. The most conspicuous persons in Plymouth to adopt this fashion
were Mr. Bryant and Capt. Simeon Dike. Of course the trousers and
boots had to be put on and off together, thus making the fashion
too troublesome to last, and by a process of evolution the cloth or
leather gaiters followed. It is as true in dress as in other things
that one extreme follows another, and so the next fashion for men was
for loose trousers with full plaited or gathered bodies.
In 1840 the Pilgrim House passed into the hands of Francis J.
Goddard, who kept it two or three years, and was succeeded by Stephen
Lucas, who again was succeeded in 1845 by Joseph White. Of course Mr.
Goddard, son of Daniel and Beulah (Simmons) Goddard, is remembered
by most of my readers. Mr. Lucas was a man of varied occupations
during his long life. A wheelwright by trade, he kept several kinds
of stores later, a stable on School street, the Pilgrim House, a
photograph saloon, and last a fruit store, as the predecessor of
Charles H. Churchill on Main street. He was the son of Samuel and
Jemima (Robbins) Lucas of Carver, and married in 1820 Rebecca Holmes
of Plymouth, and died November 23, 1888. Joseph White, previous to
his taking the hotel, had a stall in the Plymouth market. The Hotel
was burned June 20, 1846, and Mr. White left Plymouth and carried
on a boarding house in Boston on the corner of Bedford and Lincoln
streets.
The Pilgrim House was burned as I have stated, June 20, 1846. I was
in Europe at the time, but my letters from home told me about the
midnight fire, and about the appearance on the scene of Dr. Wm. J.
Walker, a director of the Old Colony Railroad, in his drawers. He was
occupying for the summer the house on North street now occupied by
the Misses Russell.
After the Masonic building, then called the Union building, was built
on the site of the Pilgrim house, one of its first tenants was Dr.
Samuel Merritt, already fully referred to in a former chapter, who
occupied the two rooms on the corner, one for his office, and one
for his sleeping room. After Dr. Merritt went to California in 1849,
the rooms were occupied successively by Dr. F. B. Brewer, dentist,
Dr. Robert D. Foster, and Dr. Sylvanus Bramhall, also dentists,
and by Dr. James L. Hunt. Winslow S. Holmes at one time occupied a
barber shop in a rear room on Middle street, and also at one time,
Charles T. May and Lysander Dunham had shops in the northerly Main
street room. The other occupants of the street floor and basement,
many of whom will be recalled by my readers, have been too numerous
to mention. The corner room upstairs was occupied in 1850 by Wm. H.
Spear, attorney-at-law, and the other room, together with the hall,
called Union Hall, was used by the Standish Guards. Until 1869, when
the building came into the possession of the Masons, the hall was
used for miscellaneous purposes, including dancing schools kept by
Wm. Atwood and others, cotillion parties, lectures and exhibitions.
The next site, on which the engine house stands, was occupied farther
back than 1830 by a dwelling house, in which lived on the south side
Dr. Nathan Hayward, and on the north side two of my great aunts, Miss
Hannah White, who died Jan. 3, 1841, at the age of ninety-four, and
her sister, Mrs. Joanna Winslow, who died in May, 1829.
Dr. Hayward was the son of Nathan and Susanna (Latham) Hayward of
Bridgewater, and in 1793-4 was a surgeon in the United States Army,
under Major General Anthony Wayne in the war against the western
Indians. In 1795 he married Anna, daughter of Pelham and Joanna
(White) Winslow, and settled in Plymouth. He was at one time in
partnership with Dr. James Thacher, and with him was instrumental
in establishing the first stage line to Boston in 1796. He was my
mother’s family physician, and I have a vivid recollection of his
administration to my rebellious stomach of senna and salts, tincture
of rhubarb and castor oil, and also of that instrument fearfully and
wonderfully made with which he occasionally extracted a tooth. He was
appointed in 1814 by the Governor sheriff of Plymouth county, and
continued in office until 1843. His youngest son, George Partridge
Hayward, now living in Boston, was named after his predecessor in
office, George Partridge of Duxbury. Dr. Hayward in 1831 formed a
professional partnership with his nephew, Dr. Winslow Warren, and
died June 16, 1848.
Pelham Winslow, the husband of Mrs. Joanna Winslow, was a son of
General John and Mary (Little) Winslow, well known as the officer in
command of the expedition for the removal from Acadia of the neutral
French, and married in 1770 Joanna, daughter of Gideon and Joanna
(Howland) White. He graduated at Harvard in 1753. In 1768 he and
James Hovey of Plymouth were the only barristers at law in Plymouth
County, thus holding a position at the bar above that of either
Attorney-at-law or counsellor. At the coming on of the revolution he
adhered to the crown, and after the evacuation of Boston, joined the
British Army in New York, where he was appointed paymaster general.
He died on Long Island in 1783, leaving in Plymouth his widow and two
daughters, Anna above mentioned, who married Dr. Hayward, and Mary,
who married Henry Warren. With little means of her own, and wishing
to do what she could to maintain herself and family, her father,
Gideon White, who owned the house in question, built an addition,
coming out to the sidewalk, and fitted up the lower story for her
store. The last time I saw the old lady she and her sister, after
taking tea at our house, fitted out for home with a lantern, which
in those days everybody carried on dark evenings, as there were no
street lights of any kind. An incident which occurred many years
after in one of the financial panics, recalled her to my mind. Mr.
Wm. R. Sever, county treasurer, came to me one day in great distress,
because he was unable to borrow at any of the banks ten thousand
dollars to meet county obligations coming due, and asked me to help
him. I went to Boston, and, knowing that it would be useless to apply
at any bank, went to see Mr. Ebenezer Francis, living in Pemberton
Square, who with Abbot Lawrence, Robert G. Shaw and Peter C. Brooks,
were the only persons in Boston rated at a million, while now you
can’t turn a corner without running against a millionaire. “No, Mr.
Davis, I cannot loan the money to the county,” Mr. Francis said
in answer to my application. “I am a poor man. I have one hundred
thousand dollars lying in the old Boston bank, drawing no interest.”
“But,” said I, “here is a good opportunity to place a portion of
it at interest.” “But I don’t like the security, I can’t put every
man in the county in jail.” “May I ask what you call good security”
I rejoined. “Yes, sir,” with an emphasis which showed his business
training at a time when commercial honor was more potent than law—“a
note based on a business transaction signed by the buyer and endorsed
by the seller.” But I got my money much to the joy of Mr. Sever, and
the obligations of the county were paid.
Before I left he asked me if I had ever heard of a Mrs. Joanna
Winslow, and he was interested to learn that she was my great aunt.
More than fifty years ago he said he kept a store on Washington
street, where she bought for her store pins and needles and ribbon,
buttons and laces for her stock in trade. “She was very much of a
lady,” he added, and was remembered by him always with pleasure. It
was a surprise to him to learn that Judge Charles Henry Warren, whom
he knew very well, was her grandson.
The interview presented to my mind two transitions in the shifting
scenes of life—one from the home of gentle blood to the little store,
and the other from the little store to the mansion of the millionaire.
After the death of Miss Hannah White in 1841, William S. Russell
moved into the part of the house which had been occupied by her and
made it his home with his family until his death, and after the death
of Mrs. Dr. Hayward the house was occupied for a time by the Old
Colony Club, until it was bought by the town. The little store was
abandoned by Mrs. Winslow after a few years’ occupancy, and used as a
store by James LeBaron. As far back as I can remember it was occupied
by John Thomas, attorney-at-law, who was succeeded by Gustavus
Gilbert, also an attorney, who occupied it until 1845. In that year
William S. Russell occupied it as a grocery store, followed by Miss
Priscilla Hedge with a circulating library. Capt. Eleazer Stevens
Turner then occupied it as a grocery store, succeeded by Pelham
Winslow Hayward, who had his office there until the town bought the
estate.
Gustavus Gilbert was a son of David Gilbert, an attorney-at-law in
Mansfield, who graduated at Harvard in 1797. Mr. Gilbert came to
Plymouth not far from 1830, and married Caroline Eliza, daughter of
Dr. Isaac LeBaron. He practiced law in Plymouth many years, and died
September 1, 1865.
William S. Russell was a son of James and Experience (Shaw) Russell,
and married in 1820 Mary Winslow, daughter of Dr. Nathan Hayward.
After the firm of Davis & Russell in Plymouth, of which he was a
member, was dissolved in 1827, he moved to Boston, and for a time
was in the wholesale dry goods business in Central street, the
senior member of the firm of Russell, Shaw & Freeman. After the
dissolution of the partnership in 1829, he formed a partnership with
Wm. Sturtevant in the same business, which continued two years, when
he continued the business in partnership with Andrew L. Russell.
When the last firm discontinued business he went to Illinois as the
representative of parties in Plymouth and Boston, owners of land in
that state, and after his return settled in Plymouth. In 1846 he was
chosen Register of Deeds for Plymouth County, and continued in office
until his death. He was a careful student of Pilgrim history, and by
the publication in 1846 of a “Guide to Plymouth and Recollections
of the Pilgrims,” and in 1855 of “Pilgrim Memorials and Guide to
Plymouth,” made valuable contributions to Pilgrim literature. He died
in Plymouth, February 22, 1863.