During my youth the house now occupied by Miss Perkins, the daughter
of the late John Perkins, was owned and occupied by George Drew,
who has already been noticed. He built the hotel which stood on the
corner of Middle street, and besides conducting a stable on that
street, was largely engaged in the management of the Boston line of
stages. Among other children he had a son, John Glover Drew, who was
one of my playmates and schoolmates. John Glover was afflicted at
times with a singular infirmity which like paralysis of the vocal
organs would for the space of fifteen minutes disable him from
uttering a word. I remember once his receiving a flogging for not
answering a question put to him by the teacher the first time an
attack occurred in school. I had a classmate at Harvard who for a
time was affected in the same way, but in both cases the infirmity
finally disappeared.
George Drew had a brother, Thomas, known as Dr. Drew, though I
never knew of his practicing medicine, who for many years rendered
important service in the educational field in Plymouth. Besides
teaching a private school, he was in conjunction with Benjamin Drew,
a teacher in the school in town square, and, when what was called the
town school was established in 1827, and a school house built in that
year for its accommodation in School street, opposite the rear land
of the Davis building lot, he was selected as its teacher. He was
also town clerk from 1818 to 1840, succeeding Deacon Ephraim Spooner
in that office. He had a son, Thomas, three years older than myself,
one of the old boys in the High school when I entered it in 1832. Tom
was a bright fellow, and for many years performed valuable service
as a journalist in the offices of the Worcester _Spy_ and the Boston
_Herald_. While William H. Lord was the teacher of the High school, a
gentleman, by the way, very popular with the boys, and one who always
enjoyed a joke, it was the custom at the opening of the school in
the morning for the scholars to rise in turn and repeat a verse of
scripture. On the morning after it became known that the teacher was
engaged to Miss Persis Kendall, the daughter of Rev. Dr. Kendall, Tom
rose in his place and said, “Salute Persis, the beloved of the Lord.”
John Perkins, a later occupant of the house under consideration,
son of John and Sarah (Adams) Perkins of Kingston, married in 1825
Adeline Tupper of Kingston, and established himself as a hatter
in Plymouth, where he ever after made his home. He was many years
a constable of the town, and Deputy Sheriff, and in the year 1856
he was Sheriff of Plymouth county. While constable and deputy, I
have reason to know, as chairman of the Board of Selectmen during a
long period, that he performed his duties with firmness, and at the
same time with great discretion. For instance in arresting men for
drunkenness, especially in cases where the offence was unusual or
perhaps accidental, he was careful not to disgrace them by a public
exhibition of their weakness, and often led them by circuitous routes
to their homes, exacting the promise of a reform which rougher
treatment would have tended to prevent. On one occasion, however,
his usual discretion failed him. It was during the civil war when it
was feared that confederate emissaries gathered in Canada might by
secret invasion of our towns cause widespread damage by extensive
conflagrations. While in Boston one afternoon I was informed by
Alexander Holmes, President of the Old Colony Railroad, that he had
been notified by the chief of police of Boston that an invasion of
our coast towns was expected that night, and that extraordinary
precautions had been ordered for the protection of public buildings
and lumber yards, wharves and freight houses. As I had an appointment
in Boston that evening and could not return home, I telegraphed
to Mr. Perkins to place a dozen or fifteen watchmen in various
places, stating my reason, but telling him to say nothing about it
for fear of a popular alarm. When I came home the next day I was a
little mortified to find that the story had been told, and that the
whole town had been through the night in a fever of excitement, and
consternation. I consoled myself, however, with the belief that I
had done my duty and would have been unable to justify myself if I
had failed to act on the information received, and any untoward act
had occurred. The same precautions were taken in the cities on the
coast, but with less notoriety. Mr. Perkins died August 20, 1877.
There was another alarm which occurred in 1871 or 1872, which it
may be well to mention here of which nothing was known except by
those immediately concerned. A letter was received from New York at
the Plymouth Bank, of which I was president, in which the writer
stated that he had overheard a plan to enter and rob the bank on
or about a certain night, and advised that proper precautions be
taken. Watchmen were placed in my house, and in that of the cashier,
and extra watchmen in the bank. In those days it was frequently the
plan for bank burglars to secure the officers having the keys, and
carrying them to the bank to force them to open the safe. The bank
watchmen were consequently instructed to admit no one to the bank
on any pretense, even if accompanied by the officers themselves.
After I think the second or third night of watching, the writer of
the letter appeared at the bank, and said that the plan had been
given up. The men in New York had either heard from their pal, who
had been some time in Plymouth, that he had discovered indications
of unusual precautions on the part of the bank, or for some other
reason had decided to abandon the scheme. If the writer of the letter
had demanded or asked for money, his story might have been thought a
fake, but as he betrayed no wish for compensation, and was perfectly
satisfied with the payment of twenty-five dollars for his expenses, I
came to the conclusion that he was a stool pigeon, under pay from the
New York police, and neither asked nor expected pay from the bank.
An actual entry of the bank occurred on the 13th of January, 1830.
Pelham Winslow Warren, brother of the late Dr. Winslow Warren of
Plymouth, about to leave town for a season to attend to his duties as
clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, deposited for
safe keeping his silver and plate in the vault in the basement of
the bank, whose place of business was at that time the southerly end
of the building which stood where the Russell building now stands.
The deposit consisted of nine silver table spoons, twelve silver
teaspoons, two silver ladles, one pair of silver sugar tongs, one
silver toast rack, one silver fish knife; and these plated articles,
one coffee pot, one teapot, one sugar dish, one cream pot, one cake
basket, and two pairs of candlesticks, all of which were marked J.
T., the initials of Jeanette Taylor, the maiden name of Mr. Warren’s
wife. All of the above articles were stolen, and the entry was made
through a back window by means of a short ladder, evidently cut from
a longer one, the other part of which was afterwards found in the
back yard of a resident of the town. None of the property of the bank
was missing, except a roll of twenty ten cent pieces, which happened
to be in the basement vault. It was evident that the burglar knew
of the deposit of the silver, and was probably a Plymouth man, as
no attempt was made to enter the safe in the banking room. Strong
suspicions were entertained of a man, whom I remember very well, but
no arrest was ever made.
For many years the two houses next but two north of the Perkins
house, were at different times owned and occupied by Johnson
Davie, who was a son of Solomon and Jedidah (Sylvester) Davie.
He was a mason by trade, and married in 1823, Phebe, daughter of
Ephraim Finney. He was one of the water commissioners who made a
contract with the Jersey City cement pipe company to lay the pipe
for the Plymouth water works. In the performance of his duties as
commissioner he rendered important service to both the town and the
company by following with trowel in hand the laying of the pipe and
assuring himself that every foot had a sufficient covering of cement
properly mixed and laid. He was a man of brains, and used them so
that he often found himself encountering public opinion, which was
said by Carlyle to be the opinion of fools. He died December 25,
1882. Ezra Johnson Davee, his son, born in 1824, entered about 1840
the counting room of Langdon & Co., a Boston house in the Smyrna
trade, and after a few years, on the death of the Smyrna bookkeeper
he was sent out to take charge of the business until another man
could be sent out to take his place. He has been there ever since
either managing the affairs of Langdon & Co., or his own for more
than forty years, visiting his family in Plymouth about once in five
years. I made a passage with him in 1895 in the Cephalonia on his
return from one of these visits, and now in 1905 he has just sailed
August 1, in the Ivernia for Liverpool, at the age of eighty-one,
with the vigor of middle life scarcely impaired. He married in Smyrna
Betsey Ghout and Amelia Marion Ghout, the latter accompanying him on
his late visit home.
The northerly house of the two owned by Mr. Davee was kept as a
public house, under the name of the Old Colony House for some years
prior to 1871, by N. M. Perry, who was a native of either Norfolk
or Worcester county. He had previously kept the Mansion House on
the corner of North and Court streets, and later after living in
Whitman a short time, he returned to Plymouth and kept what is now
the Plymouth Rock House, called by him the Old Colony House, where he
died July 17, 1877.
Coomer Weston of whom I next speak, was the son of Coomer and Patty
(Cole) Weston, and was born in 1784. He was the keeper of the jail
some years, which position he resigned in 1829, and moved into the
house now occupied by Mrs. Wm. S. Danforth, where he lived until
1839 or 1840, when he built a house on the corner of Court street
and Faunce’s lane, now Allerton street, where he died July 7,
1870. He was the first captain of the Standish Guards. During the
last thirty years of his life he was interested in raising fruit,
especially apples and pears, and in horticulture. He married in 1804
Hannah, daughter of Jabez Doten, and had Coomer, 1805, who was also
at one time captain of the Standish Guards; Francis Henri, 1807, an
enterprising shipmaster; Hannah Doten, 1809; Ann Maria, 1813; Lydia,
1818; Thomas, 1821, a clergyman settled at various times in various
towns, and our townsman, Myles Standish Weston.
In 1849 Lemuel Bradford opened a store called the North end grocery,
where the Cold Spring Grocery store now stands, and up to that time
there were only three stores where there are now twenty-seven between
North street and the Kingston line. At the date above mentioned there
were two hotels in the town, while now there are six open all the
year, and four more open only during the summer. As an indication of
the extension of the town towards the North, it may be stated that
while in 1880 the center of population was in the center of Leyden,
Market and Summer streets, it was in 1900, at the house of Capt. E.
B. Atwood on Court street. It is probable that it will be found under
the last census to be still further North.
In a modest house a little beyond the North end grocery on the east
side of the street there lived for many years one of the uncles of
the town. Every town has its uncles, and wherever you find them they
are sterling, upright men, who have a kindly and affectionate word
for and from everybody. Peter Holmes was the man known only as Uncle
Peter, a shipmaster in his early days who sailed for my grandfather,
and whose letters written from foreign ports, which I have read,
show him to have been skilful and trusted in his profession. My
young readers will be fortunate if they find as worthy a man as my
old Uncle Peter. He died July 17, 1869. He married in 1801 Sally,
daughter of Lazarus Harlow, and had five sons, one of whom was our
late townsman, Peter Holmes, who lived in the house now occupied by
Dr. Brown on North street, and six daughters, two of whom married our
venerable townsman, William Rider Drew.
There was another uncle, Uncle Lem, sailmaker by trade, whose soul
was as white as the canvas on which he worked. He was the son of
Lemuel and Abigail (Pierce) Simmons, and was born in 1790. He married
in 1818 Priscilla, daughter of Thomas Sherman, and died December 6,
1863. No truer inscription was ever cut on a gravestone than that
which says in simple, unaffected words that, “he was universally
beloved and respected; honest and upright, with a cheerful, pleasant
manner, and a kind, benevolent heart. To know him was to love him.”
There was still another uncle of whom I am glad of an opportunity
to say a word as the tribute of a friend to his memory. Uncle Ed.
Watson, the Lord of the Isle, was in many respects a remarkable
man. Born and bred on Clark’s Island at the entrance of Plymouth
harbor about four miles from town, and eighty acres in extent, he
there spent his life a sailor and fisherman when occasion demanded,
always a farmer familiar with the secrets which nature is ready to
disclose to her lovers, a poet of no mean acquirements, and above all
a student of the events of the world, a philosopher who acted his
philosophy without preaching it, and who as much deserves the title
of sage as some who in a broader field won a more notorious name. He
did not talk philosophy as Hawthorne described Emerson and Thoreau
talking it, leaning on their hoes in the garden with Alcott sitting
on the fence discoursing on the “Why and the Wherefore,” but as he
laboriously tilled the soil he recognized in every stone and worm and
blade of grass the prodigality of nature, and in every annual bloom
of the buttercup and rose a lesson of obedience to the laws of God.
He said to me once, “Oh, Mr. Davis, if all were as obedient to the
divine will as the blossoms on yonder apple tree, by Geo. Germain,
what a world this would be.” In his island home he was hospitable to
the last degree. Visitors came to his grounds as if they were public,
and if friends were among them he dropped his hoe or spade or scythe
to entertain them when his labor in the field could ill be spared,
and perhaps invited them to partake of his noonday meal, but like Sir
Roderick:
“Yet not in action, word or eye,
Failed aught in hospitality.”
I was one day at Plymouth Rock with Wm. E. Forster, who had recently
distinguished himself by his efforts in parliament in favor of the
educational bill, when Mr. Watson came up the wharf with a kinnerkin
in one hand, and a pair of chickens in the other. I introduced him to
Mr. Foster as a member of the English parliament, and he asked if the
gentleman was Wm. E. Forster—Forster, with an “r,” and when assured
that he was, he said, “I am glad to see you. I know all about you,
that last education speech you made hit the nail on the head.” The
two then engaged in conversation on English affairs, and after they
separated I pointed out to Mr. Forster the island on which Mr. Watson
was born, and had always lived, having had only a schooling of three
months in all his life. “You astonish me,” he replied, adding, “why
that man knows more about English politics than three-fourths of the
members of parliament.”
To give him his full name, Edward Winslow Watson, son of John and
Lucia Marston Watson, was born December 17, 1797, and died where he
was born, August 8, 1876. His funeral was unique and impressive.
The green bottom lap streak boat in which many hundreds of times he
had stemmed the winds and tide was the catafalque which bore him to
town, while the boats of his island and Saquish and Gurnet friends,
like white-winged angels, attended him to his rest. In closing this
notice of my friend I will quote from his little book of poems lines
illustrating the serious thought which his mind evolved from the most
trifling incidents of life:
“Dear Jennie, that nice cranberry tart,
You gave to me bedecked with paste,
Lies like a bleeding, broken heart,
Whose inner life has run to waste.
You placed it on the basket top,
In paper coverings still it lay,
Mid rolling seas a lurch it got,
And bled its inner life away.
Its fate, how like the buoyant heart
That o’er life’s billowy ocean springs
Till disappointment tips the bark,
And overstrained, snap go the strings.”