There stood where the Sherman block stands until that block was built
a few years ago a two story wooden building occupied in my boyhood by
George W. Virgin at the south end, and by Deacon Wm. P. Ripley at the
north end. These stores were at various times also occupied by Samuel
Shaw & Co., Henry Tilson, Wm. Z. Ripley, Wm. T. Hollis, Southworth
Barnes, Stevens M. Burbank, Thomas Holsgrove, Jacob Howland and
Albert N. Fletcher.
Samuel Shaw, a son of Southworth and Maria (Churchill) Shaw, was
born in Plymouth in 1808, and married Mary Gibbs, daughter of
Simeon Dike, and died May 28, 1872. Mr. Virgin, the son of John and
Priscilla (Cooper) Virgin, married in 1816, Mary, daughter of Isaac
and Lucy (Harlow) Barnes, and died April 19, 1869. Henry Tilson, who
died in January, 1835, and Wm. P. Ripley have been already referred
to. William Z. Ripley, the son of William P. and Mary (Briggs)
Ripley, was born in Plymouth and married Adeline B. Cushman. He
finally removed to Boston. William T. Hollis, as already mentioned
in connection with the Bradford tavern, was the son of Henry and
Deborah (Leonard) Hollis, and was born in Plymouth in 1826. He was
jointly with Thomas Prince, proprietor and editor of the OLD COLONY
MEMORIAL from 1861 to 1863, and of the _Memorial and Rock_ after
the _Memorial_ was consolidated with the _Plymouth Rock_, jointly
with Thomas Prince and George F. Andrews, from 1863 to 1864. He
died unmarried at the Plymouth Rock Hotel only a few years ago.
Southworth Barnes, son of William and Mercy (Carver) Barnes, was born
in Plymouth, and married in 1833, Lucy, daughter of John and Lydia
(Mason) Burbank. After his death, which occurred October 29, 1861,
his store was taken by Stevens Mason Burbank, nephew of his wife, who
married in 1851, Cornelia, daughter of Samuel and Rebecca (Bradford)
Doten. The rooms over the stores in the building in question were
occupied by various persons at various times for miscellaneous
purposes. Among the occupants were the Plymouth Anti-Slavery
Society, Thomas May, Benjamin F. Field and Abel D. Breed, tailors,
Benjamin Hathaway, manufacturer of neck stocks, Clary and Burr,
barbers, Dr. Sanborn, dentist, the _Plymouth Free Press_, newspaper,
P. T. Denney, and N. A. T. Jones, tailors, Thomas B. Drew and Thomas
D. Shumway, dentists.
The occupant of the next house from 1828 to 1837 was Daniel Gale, a
tailor whose shop on the other side of Main street has been already
mentioned. He was a son of Noah and Rebecca Gale, but where he was
born and when, I do not know. He married Elizabeth, daughter of
Edward Winslow of Duxbury, and probably about 1837 moved away from
Plymouth, as I find no record of his death. Like all men in his line
of business in localities too small for keeping an assortment of
cloth, he was only a tailor, and not a draper. Customers furnished
their own cloth, and by an unwritten law the tailor was entitled to
the remnants from which in time considerable profit accrued. These
remnants were universally, in Plymouth at least, called cabbage.
Hence the word cabbage as applied in the sense of stealing or, to use
a milder phrase, of taking possession of. Mr. Gale, after a residence
of some years in Plymouth, built the block of houses between Sandwich
street and the Mill pond, which in my boyhood was known as Gale’s
Cabbage, implying that it was built from the profits of his remnants.
Another house somewhat pretentious in style, received a name
suggested by a practice more reprehensible than one which custom
permitted. The owner was often employed as a surveyor to run out
large lots of woodland into smaller lots for sale. In doing this work
certain strips and gores of land would be omitted, and in time sold
as his own. The house took the name of Strips and Gores, as having
been built from the proceeds of these sales. I mention neither the
house nor the name of its owner, because like many other stories,
the charge may have no foundation in fact, and I have no desire to
taint his memory. The next occupant of the house in question was Dr.
Levi Hubbard, the brother of our townsman, Dr. Benjamin Hubbard, and
father of Hervey N. P. Hubbard, the librarian of the Pilgrim Society.
He was succeeded in 1841 by John Washburn, who occupied a hardware
and tin shop on the street floor and the tenement above, many years.
Harlow & Barnes, a firm engaged in the same business, consisting
of John C. Barnes and Samuel Harlow, succeeded Mr. Washburn, and
were themselves succeeded by Harlow & Bailey, the firm consisting of
Samuel Harlow and H. Porter Bailey, and by H. P. Bailey & Bro., the
predecessors of the firm now occupying it.
Dr. Levi Hubbard, son of Benjamin and Polly (Walker) Hubbard, was
born in Holden, Mass., and after graduating at the medical college of
Pittsfield, settled in Medfield, whence he moved to Plymouth in 1839,
and occupied the house in question until May 29, 1841, when he moved
to the north side of Town Square. In January, 1844, in consequence
of a fire in the house he occupied on the square, he removed to the
house above the town house, where he remained until November, 1844,
when he removed to New Bedford. From New Bedford he went to Chicopee,
and in 1849 to California in the ship Edward Everett, sailing from
Boston. Returning in 1851 after short residences in Dutchess and
Saratoga counties in New York State, he removed to Iowa, and died in
Glenwood in that state in 1886. He married in 1837, Luzilla, daughter
of Roger Haskell of Peru, Mass., and his son, Hervey N. P. Hubbard
was born in the house under consideration, in 1839.
The site of the house next north of the store of Bailey Bros. is
memorable as the site of the Bunch of Grapes Inn in the middle of the
eighteenth century.
The house now standing was built by Joseph Avery, a bookseller and
book binder, who had branch establishments in Worcester and Portland.
In school book binding his concerns were extensive and profitable. He
came to Plymouth in 1807, and up to 1816 occupied for his business
one of the one story buildings on the east side of Main street
already referred to. On the 29th of July, 1822, while superintending
the erection of the building he incautiously stepped on a loose
board and fell from the upper story to the street floor, suffering
injuries which resulted in his death on the fourth of the following
month at the age of forty-two years. In 1826 the house was sold to
Dr. Zacheus Bartlett, who occupied it both for his business and home
until his death, which occurred December 25, 1835. Dr. Bartlett was
born in South Plymouth, September 20, 1768, and graduated at Harvard
in 1789. He studied medicine with Dr. Ezekiel Hersey of Hingham, and
settled in his native town. He served his fellow citizens as their
Representative in the General Court one or more years, was one of the
founders of the Pilgrim Society, and its vice-president from 1828 to
1835, and by invitation of the Town, delivered the oration on the
Pilgrim anniversary in 1798. He married in 1796 Hannah, daughter of
Samuel and Experience (Atwood) Jackson, and up to the time of his
occupancy of the Main street house lived in a house on North street,
easterly of the house now occupied by Miss Lydia Jackson. All through
my boyhood there was a one story building in the southeast corner of
the yard which I have always supposed was his office. As I remember
the house it was still owned by Dr. Bartlett, and occupied by various
tenants, and the office building was occupied by Thomas Maglathlin,
who lived alone. Dr. Bartlett had four children, Sydney, the eminent
lawyer who married Caroline Louisa Pratt of Boston, and for many
years was recognized as the leader of the Boston bar; Margaret,
who married Dr. Winslow Warren, Dr. George Bartlett of Boston, who
married Amelia, a daughter of Dr. Wm. Pitt Greenwood of Boston,
and Caroline, who married James Pratt of Boston. It is worthy of
mention that three Plymouth men, Richard Warren, George Bartlett and
Charles L. Hayward, married daughters of Dr. Wm. Pitt Greenwood. The
occupation of this building by John T. Hall and others, is too recent
to require notice. John T. Hall, son of Eber and Elizabeth (Burgess)
Hall, was born in Plymouth and married in 1843 Betsey, daughter of
Joab Thomas, and at various times kept a barber shop, a fancy goods
store and engaged in insurance business.
The occupation of the site on which the store of George Gooding
stands with a tenement over it, possesses unusual interest. About the
year 1750 James Shurtleff built a house on the site which in 1789
came into the possession of Caleb Leach, who came to Plymouth from
Bridgewater and projected the Plymouth water works, the first water
works built in the United States. The company was chartered in 1796,
the year after a company was chartered in Wilkesbarre, Penn., but the
Plymouth works were constructed before the works of that town. The
pipes were yellow or swamp pine logs, ten to twelve feet long, and
ten inches in diameter, clear of sap, with a bore from two to four
inches in diameter, and sharpened at one end, the other end bound
with an iron hoop to prevent splitting when driven into the bore.
During the latter years of the company iron connections with a flange
in the middle were used.
In 1800 the house came into the possession of Asa Hall, who came from
Boston, and fitted up its lower room for a watchmaker’s shop. From
that time to this, a period of one hundred and six years the site has
been identified with the watch making business. In 1802 John Gooding,
who came to Plymouth from Taunton, succeeded Mr. Hall in the shop,
and in 1805 married Deborah, daughter of Benjamin Barnes. In the next
year Mr. Barnes bought the house, and his son-in-law, Mr. Gooding,
continued to occupy it, finally receiving in 1836 a deed of the
property from Mr. Barnes. Not many years after Mr. Gooding obtained
possession, he took down the old house and built the present one. I
remember the old house well. The shop door was divided across the
middle, the lower part wood, the upper part glass, and in suitable
weather, the upper part was swung back. The other doors which I
remember like this, were in the harness shop of Barnabas Otis on the
south side of Summer street, the second or third above Spring street,
the office of Dr. Amariah Preston, next north of the Gooding house,
in the old house where Davis building now stands, and in the Solomon
Churchill shop on the east side of Main street. Mr. Gooding was the
son of Joseph and Rebecca (Macomber) Gooding of Taunton, and was born
in 1780. His father was a watchmaker, and he had at least one, and I
think two brothers, who followed the same trade. His brother Josiah
and nephew Josiah, kept within my recollection a watchmaker’s and
jeweller’s store in Joy’s building on Washington street, in Boston,
many years. A member of one of the branches of Jos. Gooding’s family,
Mr. A. W. B. Gooding, married Mary Woodward Barnes, a daughter of
Bradford Barnes. Mr. Gooding was a member of the Board of Selectmen
from 1825 to 1831, inclusive, a Director of the Plymouth Bank from
1839 to 1865, inclusive, and died September 25, 1870, at the age of
ninety years. He had seven children, Deborah Barnes, who married
Aurin Bugbee, John, 1808, who married Betsey H., daughter of Ephraim
Morton, and became a well known master of the Bark Yeoman, William,
1810, who married Lydia Ann, daughter of Putnam Kimball, Benjamin
Barnes, 1813, who married Harriet, daughter of Charles Goodwin,
Eliza Ann, 1818, who married Orin F. Alderman, George Barnes, who
married Eliza Merrill of Concord, N. H., and James Bugbee, 1823, who
married first, 1851, Almira T., daughter of Henry Morton of Plymouth,
and second, Rhoda Ann White of Worcester. Benjamin Barnes Gooding
succeeded his father in business in the same store, and died June 28,
1900, at the age of 87. Two sons of Benjamin Barnes Gooding, Benjamin
W. and George, succeeded their father and continued until the spring
of 1905, when their partnership was dissolved, George continuing in
the business. Thus for 103 years, three generations of the Gooding
family have carried on the business of watch making on the same site,
and as Earl W. Gooding, the son of George, has become associated with
his father, it may with some degree of certainty be predicted that a
fourth generation will continue the business. What I have said does
not tell the whole story. James Bugbee, the youngest son of John
Gooding, learned the watchmaker’s trade, and established himself in
Worcester, finally becoming connected with the Waltham watch factory.
His ingenuity and skill soon gave him a leading position in that
concern and improvements invented by him in watchmaking machinery
for which numerous patents were secured, enabled him to leave at his
death a substantial property for his widow and son, who are still
living. The upper part of the building in question is occupied by Dr.
E. E. Fuller.
The next house is occupied by two stores and a tenement. As long
ago as I can remember, the small store now occupied by Mr. Loring
as a watchmaker’s shop, was the office of Dr. Amariah Preston, the
father of Dr. Hervey N. Preston, previously mentioned. Dr. Preston
was born February 5, 1758, and entered the army in 1777. After the
war he lived a short time in Uxbridge, Mass., and Ashford, Conn.,
and then removed to Dighton, Mass., to learn a trade. In 1785 he
began the study of medicine, and in 1790 settled in Bedford, where he
married October 18, in that year, Hannah Read, and second, May 15,
1796, Ruhamah Lane. After practising in Bedford forty-three years, he
removed in 1833 to Plymouth, and occupied the office in question.
He practised in Plymouth until 1845, eight years after the death
of his son, and in that year at the age of 87 went to Billerica to
live with another son, Marshall Preston, and finally removed with
him to Lexington, where he died, October 29, 1853, at the age of
ninety-five. I remember well the kindly manner of the old gentleman
when I went frequently to his shop to buy gamboge to paint the
pictures in my geography.
After the departure of Dr. Preston from Plymouth in 1845, his office
was taken by Dr. Samuel Merritt, who has been already noticed in
connection with the exodus to California in 1849. After the removal
of Dr. Merritt to the Union Hall building, after its erection in
1848, Dr. Ervin Webster succeeded to the office and occupied it until
his sad death, and that of his son, Olin E. Webster by drowning in
Billington Sea, August 28, 1856. Since that time the office has been
occupied by Charles C. Doten, Ichabod Carver, Edward W. Atwood,
Benjamin H. Crandon, Sarah Morton Holmes, and B. D. Loring, its
present tenant.
The store on the north corner of the building was taken by Bartlett
Ellis, for the sale of fancy goods, and for a circulating library,
after he gave up his shoe store on the corner of Middle street in
1831, and was occupied by him many years. His successors in the store
I think, have been a Mrs. Richards, and the present occupant, Miss F.
F. Simmons both in the millinery business.
The tenement above the stores was occupied until 1831 by John
Churchill, and after his death, George Churchill, his son, sold
the building to Thomas Burgess Bartlett, who occupied it until his
recent death. Thomas Burgess Bartlett married Bethiah, a daughter
of John Churchill, while Bartlett Ellis, the occupant of the store,
married in 1821 for his second wife, Hannah, another daughter of Mr.
Churchill.
During my boyhood the house which stood on the site of the Plymouth
Savings Bank, was occupied by two brothers, Thomas and William
Jackson, substantial merchants for many years, Thomas occupying the
southerly part, and William, the northerly. Thomas, called Thomas,
Jr., born in 1757, was the son of Thomas and Sarah (Taylor) Jackson,
and married in 1788 Sally May. They had three children, Thomas,
Edwin and Sarah, but I have no recollection of any child in their
family. He was one of the founders of the Plymouth Bank in 1803, and
a subscriber for thirty shares of stock, and was a director from 1826
until his death, August 8, 1837. William Jackson, known as Major
Jackson from his rank in the militia, was born in 1763, and married
in 1788, Anna, daughter of David Barnes of Scituate, and had Francis
Leonard in 1789, who married Samuel Maynard, Leavitt Taylor, 1790,
and David Barnes, 1794. He married second in 1795, Mercy, daughter
of John and Mercy (Foster) Russell, and had Frederick William, 1798,
Anna, 1799, and William R., 1801. He married third in 1804, widow
Esther (Phillips) Parsons. Mr. Jackson was one of the founders of the
Plymouth Bank, a subscriber for twenty-seven shares of stock, and a
director from 1803 to 1815, and again from 1827 to 1836. He died in
Plymouth, October 22, 1836.
There was a vacant lot belonging to the Messrs. Jackson with two
cellars, the remains of houses taken down long before my remembrance,
and in the Jackson yard there was a Jackson apple tree, from which in
season apples would fall upon a shed and roll into the vacant lot,
and in recess there was a race to capture such apples as might have
fallen during school hours. What has been the fate of the Jackson
apple trees of my youth, and where have they gone? It was a red,
juicy, early summer apple, a fit prize for the race, and where have
the queen apple trees gone, only one of which is left in Plymouth.
That in the yard of Wm. Rider Drew was cut down during the last year,
leaving the one in the yard of Mrs. Lothrop, solitary and alone. And
where are the June Eatings, a name corrupted into Jenitons, of which
I think there is only one left in the yard of Miss Lydia Jackson in
North street. And I must not forget those favorites with the boys,
the button pears. Not especially prized by their owners we boys were
permitted to take all we could find on the ground. With our trouser’s
pockets bulging with the little fellows, we would find our way to
school, little suspecting that we were paying dearly for them in the
cost of a doctor’s visit, and a dose of picra.
In the vacant lot above mentioned, the most conspicuous feature was
a large sty in which Major Jackson kept his hogs. So far from such
appurtenance being considered a nuisance in those days, a family
without one or more hogs was an exception. In earlier times they were
permitted to run at large, though not within my day in Plymouth,
but it may surprise my younger readers to know that in New York and
Washington, as late as the civil war, they roved about the streets as
freely as dogs. As late as 1721 it was voted by the inhabitants of
Plymouth that they might run at large that year if properly ringed
and yoked, and hog constables were annually chosen to see that the
condition was complied with. The custom of keeping hogs was so
universal in my day that perhaps a dozen times during the season a
dealer would buy in the Brighton market a drove of hogs and drive
them home over the road, selling them on the way. When a sale was
made the drivers would tie the four legs of the hog and raise it to a
pair of steelyards, hanging from a bar supported by their shoulders,
and thus find the weight. While this operation was going on the
drove would roam at their own sweet will, nosing up the gutters and
sidewalks in every direction. I remember James Ruggles of Rochester,
the donor to the county of the fountain in front of the Court house,
and Swift, one of the members of the firm of pork packers in Chicago,
driving their hogs from house to house. Until a very recent date,
more in deference to an old custom, than to any necessity, hog-reeves
were chosen each year by the town, and recently married grooms were
selected for the honor.
The occupants of the house in question after the Jacksons were, Madam
Mary Warren and Wm. F. Peterson, in the southerly part, and Susan,
Sarah and Deborah L. Turner, daughters of Lothrop Turner, and Miss
Deborah L. Turner, Dr. Alexander Jackson, and Hannah D. Washburn,
milliners, and Sarah M. Holmes and Mrs. Charles Campbell, in the
northerly part, until the house was taken down, and the present
building was erected in 1887, the occupants of which are now the Old
Colony National Bank, Plymouth Saving’s Bank, the Black & White Club,
Dr. Schubert and Dr. Lothrop, and the Natural History Society. After
the Jackson house came into the possession of the Savings Bank, a one
story building was erected on the northerly line of the lot, which
was occupied at various times by the Public Library, and by Arthur
Lord and Albert Mason, attorneys-at-law, and finally removed to the
Hathaway land on Middle street.
Before speaking of the occupants of the two houses which stood north
of the vacant lot on which the Bank building was erected in 1842, I
will state that in 1851 a slice fifteen or twenty feet deep was cut
from the two lots, including the front yard of the Thomas house, now
the Plymouth Tavern, and enough from the lot south of it to make the
present line to which Davis building when soon after erected, was
made to conform. As long ago as I can remember, the old house which
stood on the site of Davis building was occupied by Timothy Goodwin,
a tinman by trade, who occupied for his tinshop the upper story of
a projection in the rear of the main building. I have an impression
that he was club footed, and that he had two sons older than myself,
who with their father must have moved from Plymouth not far from the
year, 1835.
The old fashioned tinman’s trade which flourished in Mr. Goodwin’s
day when all the tinware in use was made in the local shops, has
practically disappeared, leaving only the manufacture of hot air
furnace pipes to remind us of the resonant clatter of a tinshop
once so familiar to the ear. Mr. Goodwin was born in 1779, and was
the son of Timothy Goodwin, who came from Charlestown and married
Lucy, daughter of Abiel Shurtleff of Plymouth. His father, who was
associated with the earliest postal system of Plymouth, deserves a
passing notice. Up to 1775 no post office had ever been established
in Plymouth, and at that time there were only seventy-five post
offices in the colonies, and eighteen hundred and seventy-five miles
of post routes. In the above year Benjamin Franklin was appointed
Postmaster General, and on the 12th of May William Watson was
appointed postmaster of Plymouth, and in 1790 was commissioned by
Washington. On the appointment of Mr. Watson in 1775, a horseback
mail route was established from Cambridge to Falmouth, through
Plymouth, and Timothy Goodwin and Joseph Howland were appointed post
riders, making the trip down and back once in each week. They left
Cambridge Monday noon, and arrived at Plymouth at four o’clock,
Tuesday afternoon; and leaving Plymouth at nine o’clock Wednesday
morning, reached Sandwich at four o’clock on that day, and Falmouth
at eight o’clock Thursday morning. Goodwin and Howland divided the
route, making the exchange at Plymouth.
Until 1816 the rate of postage remained unchanged as follows: for a
single letter under forty miles, eight cents; under ninety miles, ten
cents; under one hundred and fifty miles, twelve and a half cents;
under three hundred miles, seventeen cents; under five hundred miles,
twenty cents; over five hundred miles, twenty-five cents. In 1816 the
rate was fixed for a single letter not over thirty miles, six and a
quarter cents, over thirty miles and under eighty, ten cents; over
eighty and under one hundred and fifty, twelve and a half cents; over
one hundred and fifty, and under four hundred, eighteen and three
quarters cents; over four hundred, twenty-five cents, with an added
rate for every additional piece of paper, and if the letter weighed
an ounce, the rate was four times the above. The newspaper rate fixed
at the same time was one cent under one hundred miles, or within the
state; over one hundred miles, and out of the state, one and a half
cents, magazines and pamphlets one and a half cent a sheet under one
hundred miles, if periodicals, two and a half cents a sheet over one
hundred miles, but if not prepaid, four and five cents.
The above was the rate of the postage during my youth, and until I
was twenty-three years of age, when gradual reductions began to be
made, the result of which has been the postal rates as they stand
today. The rates above mentioned indicate the kind of currency
prevailing at the time. Articles on sale were priced at so many
cents, or a four-pence happenny (six and a quarter cents), nine pence
(twelve and a half cents,) a shilling (sixteen and two-thirds cents)
a quarter of a dollar, two and three pence (thirty-seven and a half
cents) a half a dollar, three and nine pence (or sixty-two and a
half cents) four and six pence (or seventy-five cents) and so on to
a dollar. Finally Mexican coins were eliminated from our currency,
and the genuine American decimal coinage exclusively prevailed. Until
the year 1855, prepayment was optional, but with the introduction
of postage stamps, prepayment was required, and when after the
establishment of expresses, it was found that they engaged in the
carriage of letters the practice was forbidden unless the letters
were stamped. If under the old system letters were not prepaid, it
was by no means unusual for persons to whom they were addressed, to
refuse to receive them and pay the high postage due. It goes without
saying that persons known to be going to Boston or New York were
pretty well loaded, as I have often been with letters to be delivered
not only to friends, but also to men in business.
If cheap postage is a blessing, it may be doubted whether it is an
unalloyed one. As one of its penalties, letter writing has become a
lost art. A three-line note or a postal card, or what is worse, a
dictation by a stenographer from which the last vestige of communion
of friend with friend is completely extinguished, has taken the
place of the welcome epistles which our grandmothers and aunts wrote
with care, and filled full not only with gossip and family news, but
also with instructive comments on events of the day. How much future
readers will lose by the absence of such volumes of correspondence as
have graced our literature during the last hundred years!
In connection with letters it may be well enough to say for the
benefit of my young readers that until 1840 envelopes were unknown,
and letters were universally folded and sealed either with sealing
wax or wafers.
There was an expression of deliberation and composure investing such
correspondence which is lost in the correspondence of today. Now
and then some impecunious person found sealing wax and even wafers
unnecessarily extravagant. I was told many years ago by a man who
called on the late Joshua Sears who left his millions to a son,
recently deceased, that he found him splitting wafers. Since the days
of envelopes I have known an officer of one of our institutions to
save all his letters, and turn the envelopes for future use.