I speak next of the Samoset House estate, not for the purpose of
following its title, but for the purpose of speaking of its occupants
at various times. As long ago as I remember the estate extended from
Court street up Wood’s Lane to what is now Allerton street. Its Court
street line extended by the line of the present gutter, the street
being widened afterwards by cutting off a strip of that and adjoining
estates on the north. There was a high, close board fence along the
street, which I remember because when a boy I brought up against it
a runaway horse which I was riding. The house on the estate was what
is now the old part of the Samoset, and was owned and occupied by
Mrs. Betsey H. Hodge and her father, Dr. Jas. Thacher, until 1827.
It faced the south, and was reached by a driveway from Wood’s Lane,
and its spacious yard was bounded on the southwest by a carriage
house and barn, a handsome lawn lying along Court street. The estate
called La Grange was altogether the most aristocratic one in town, and
at the above date, with the exception of the old Merrick Ryder house
on the southeast corner of the Mixter lot, and an old red house on
the corner of Lothrop Place, no houses were in sight at the north.
In 1827, Dr. Thacher moved into the easterly part of the Winslow
house on North street, and the estate was sold to Charles Sever, who
married in that year Mrs. Hodge’s daughter Jane. Mr. Sever was a
Kingston man, brother of Col. John and James N. Sever, and as I have
no recollection of his connection with any business in Plymouth, I
think he must have been associated with his brothers in navigation
and foreign trade. In 1833 Mr. Sever sold the estate to John Thomas,
and moved temporarily into the house on Middle street next below Mr.
Beaman’s undertaker’s establishment, while he was building the Sever
house on Russell street, which he did not live to occupy, but which
was occupied by his family until the recent death of his daughter
Catherine.
In 1837 Mr. Thomas sold the estate to Jason Hart, and removed to
New York. His business connections in that city, and his death in
Irvington, have been referred to in a previous chapter. Mr. Hart has
been already noticed as a member of the firm of Hart and Alderman,
and in business alone where the store of H. H. Cole on Main street
now stands.
In 1844 the Old Colony Railroad corporation then building their road
from Boston to Plymouth, bought the estate and built and furnished
the Samoset House, which was opened in 1845, under the management of
Joseph Stetson, who was employed by the road for the purpose. Mr.
Stetson was succeeded by James S. Parker and Henry C. Tribou, under
the firm name of Parker & Tribou, who kept it under the direction
of the railroad until 1850. In that year the house and furniture
were sold to the Samoset House Association, who leased it until
1878, at various times to the following persons in the order named:
Granville Gardner and Henry C. Tribou, under the firm name of Gardner
& Tribou, James S. Parker, A. & N. Hoxie, Comfort Whiting and Peleg
C. Chandler. In 1878, while Mr. Chandler was lessee, he bought the
estate, and in 1882 his widow sold it, exclusive of house lots at its
westerly end to T. F. Frobisher. In 1883 Mr. Frobisher sold the above
remaining estate to Daniel H. Maynard, who sold it a few years ago to
the present proprietors, James S. Clark and the late Edward E. Green
doing business under the firm name of Clark & Green.
While I am wandering about the North part of the town, let me speak
of Bourne Spooner, who having been dead thirty-five years, cannot
be remembered by any of my readers who are much less than fifty
years of age. Few are aware to whom the town was indebted, for the
establishment of the Plymouth Cordage Co., a corporation filling so
large a place among the industries of the town, and which with its
growing proportions promises to stand many years as a conspicuous and
deserved monument to his memory. He was a son of Nathaniel and Mary
(Holmes) Spooner, and was born in Plymouth, February 2, 1790. After
receiving the education which our public schools could furnish, he
went to New Orleans, where he spent ten years engaged in rope making,
but in what capacity I have no means of knowing. It is probable
that the material used in the manufacture was Kentucky hemp, as its
transportation from the hemp fields by the Mississippi river was
easy and cheap. It is doubtful whether sisal from Mexico was much
used in those days and Russia hemp and Manilla could be obtained
in Boston more expeditiously and cheaper than in New Orleans. The
unprofitableness of slave labor employed in that city appealed to his
Yankee spirit of thrift, and he conceived the idea of establishing
if possible a cordage factory in his native town. Returning home
he kept for a time a store opposite the Green, and later conferred
with a number of gentlemen in Boston, who looked favorably on the
scheme of a Plymouth factory, and on the 12th of July, 1824, an act
of incorporation was granted by the Massachusetts legislature to
Bourne Spooner, William Lovering, Jr., John Dodd and John Russell,
and their associates, as the Plymouth Cordage Company, with power to
hold real estate not exceeding twenty thousand dollars. The location
decided upon for the factory was in the north part of Plymouth, on a
stream supplied by two brooks, one of which was called Nathans brook,
after Nathan Holmes, the grandfather of Gideon F. Holmes, the present
treasurer of the company, the capacity of which was twenty horse
power. Thus it seems evident that any very considerable growth of
the establishment was not anticipated. The part of Plymouth selected
for the factory was called in Pilgrim days, “Plain Dealing,” but in
my boyhood, Bungtown, and a little later, North Town. When the Old
Colony Railroad established a station there they unwittingly adopted
practically the old Pilgrim “Seaside,” as “Plain Dealing” meant a
plain by the sea. The growth of business set in at a very early day,
and up to 1883, when the capital stock of the company was increased
to half a million of dollars, only forty-four thousand dollars had
been paid in, and all the remainder of the half million had been
furnished by the profits of the company. In 1894 the capital was
still further increased to a million, all of the increase being
furnished by the stockholders. To meet the growth of the factory
business the original water power was supplemented by steam engines
in 1837, 1839, 1850, 1868, 1888, and 1900. The last two of these are
of 1500 and 1600 horse power. In 1827 the sales of cordage amounted
to 601,023 pounds, and in 1899 to 19,597,644 pounds. In addition to
the above, while the first lot of binding twine sold in 1882 amounted
to 384,820 pounds, the sales of the same in 1899 amounted to
27,905,981 pounds, and the entire product of the factory is estimated
to be about one-seventh of the product of all the Cordage companies
in the United States. Of the large cables made by the Company I have
personal knowledge of one of fifteen or fifteen and a half inches.
About the year 1865, an English steamer, named, I think, “Concordia,”
was wrecked on Cape Cod and bought by Boston parties. The cable,
to which I refer, was ordered for the purpose of hauling her off
shore. I was told by Osborne Howes, one of the purchasers that within
forty-eight hours after it was coiled on the beach the junk men
cut it up and carried it off. The steamer was got off and towed to
Boston, where she was lengthened and refitted for service.
I have said thus much concerning the Cordage Company for the purpose
of illustrating the sagacity, energy, good judgment and integrity
of Mr. Spooner, who was until his death, during the career of the
company, its agent, and after 1837, its treasurer. He did his
business so unostentatiously, that I think few of his fellow citizens
realized the great work he was doing in building up an industry which
has done so much in promoting the growth and welfare of Plymouth.
Next to his interest in the affairs of the company intrusted to his
care, was his interest in the anti-slavery cause. How, and exactly
when he enlisted in the cause, I never knew. His life in New Orleans
probably opened his eyes to the evils of the institution of slavery,
but I do not think that he entered the anti-slavery ranks until after
the visit of George Thompson to Massachusetts, and the Garrison
mob in Boston in 1835. Among the earliest in Plymouth to engage
in the movement, according to my best recollections were, Lemuel
Stephens, William Stephens, Ichabod Morton, Edwin Morton, Ephraim
Harlow, Kendall Holmes, George Adams and Deacon Wm. Putnam Ripley,
and I think Johnson Davie and their families. Nearly all of these,
except the Ripleys, lived on “tother side,” as it was called, like
“l’autre cote” of Paris the other side of the Seine, as our “tother
side” is the other side of Town Brook. The merchants, professional
men, including ministers, and the politicians in both the whig and
democratic parties, were either too timid to join the anti-slavery
ranks, or were decidedly hostile to the anti-slavery movement. An
anti-slavery meeting was held on the evening of July 4, 1835, in
the Robinson church, which was disturbed by an incipient mob which
contented itself with breaking a few windows, and afterwards smearing
with tar the dry goods sign of Deacon Ripley. Though the OLD COLONY
MEMORIAL contained a paid advertisement of the meeting, its columns
were silent concerning its doings and the disturbance. It is of
little consequence how or when Mr. Spooner became interested in the
movement. He became one of the most prominent men in the state,
supporting it, and undoubtedly furnished to it material aid not
exceeded in amount by the contributions of any other in its ranks. He
was a constant friend and supporter of Garrison, Phillips, Quincy and
Douglas, all of whom frequently enjoyed the hospitalities of his home.
Mr. Spooner was widely known, especially by fellow travellers on the
railroad, as an expert and entertaining story teller, and skilful
in the art. He knew how to tell a story, omitting details, careful
never to say that he had a capital story, being willing to leave its
quality to the judgment of his listeners, never laughing until he
had finished, and then when his companions began to laugh he would
join with them as heartily as if he had never told the story before.
He told many stories about his great uncle, Deacon Ephraim Spooner,
which seemed to amuse some persons, the humor of which I never could
see.
But he had a nearer kinsman, his own uncle, Thomas Spooner, who was
a man of both wit and humor, from whom he must have acquired his own
delicate sense of these qualities. Thomas Spooner was at one time
town treasurer, and many years a constable. One evening he was called
upon to serve a precept, and while making his way in the dark through
a private yard he encountered a clothes line, and then a second one
which knocked off his hat. “By George,” said he, “I never knew before
what the Bible meant by ‘precept upon precept; line upon line.’” He
was an ardent whig, and when returning home one day after an absence
of a couple of days, he found posted on the town tree a notice for
a democratic meeting. “By thunder,” said he, “can’t I leave town
twenty-four hours without there being the devil to pay?” and he
pulled the notice down.
Mr. Bourne Spooner, not only as occasion offered, repeated stories
which his tenacious memory had treasured up, but he found satire
and humor in the incidents of every day life, which he often used
to point a moral, as for instance, the case of the old lady who had
a husband somewhat addicted to profanity, and who when rebuked by
a sister of the church then attending revival meetings because she
bestowed so much care on her husband, who she said was a bad man,
replied, “I know sister, my husband is a very bad man, and has little
to expect in the next world, so I feel it my duty to do what I can
for his comfort and happiness in this.”
Mr. Spooner was a tender hearted man, especially towards his workmen
and their families. An instance of his tender feelings once came
under my own observation. The Cordage Company did their banking
business in Boston, discounting once a month at the Old Colony Bank
a note to obtain bills for the monthly pay roll. During one of the
financial panics when money was almost impossible to obtain, he came
one day into the Plymouth Bank in despair. He said that he could
not get a dollar in the Old Colony Bank, and Mr. Dodd, his Boston
director, could not obtain a dollar in Boston. He had put off the
settlement of his payroll two or three times, and he was afraid to
go home and meet the disappointed looks of his men, whose families
were in absolute need of their wages. As he said this, I noticed the
tears trickling down his cheeks. It so happened, either by good luck
or good lookout, we had for some time been confining our discounts to
short paper, and our maturities were keeping us well supplied with
funds. We gave him the money, charging him only 7 per cent, while as
the following incident will show, money was worth more than double
that rate. A day or two afterwards I met on Water street, Boston, the
President and Treasurer of a large manufacturing concern in Taunton,
who asked me if I would let him have ten thousand dollars. I told him
that I would, and should charge him for it on a four months’ note,
fifteen per cent. He turned on his heel and left me. An hour after
I met him in the National Bank of Redemption, and he asked me if my
offer held good. I told him it did, and the loan was made then and
there.
Mr. Spooner married in 1813, Hannah, daughter of Amasa and Sarah
(Taylor) Bartlett, and died July 21, 1870.
All through my boyhood there were two brothers living on adjoining
estates on the easterly side of Court street, Leavitt Taylor Robbins
and Nathan Bacon Robbins, sons of Charles and Mary (Bacon) Robbins.
The former lived in the house now owned by Miss Elizabeth N. Perkins
from the time of his marriage in 1831, until his death, owning a
large estate of from fifteen to twenty acres extending from Court
street to the shore. He built a wharf and established a lumber yard
about 1831, which he carried on forty years or more, until his death,
and which was afterwards carried on by his son, Leavitt Taylor
Robbins, Jr., until his recent death. During that long period it was
carried on by father and son under the same name seventy-five years,
always with the highest credit and probably longer known on the
Kennebec and Penobscot than any other lumber yard in Massachusetts.
Mr. Robbins, born in 1799, married in 1831, Lydia, daughter of
Ephraim Fuller of Kingston, and had Lydia Johnson, 1833, who married
Noah P. Burgess; Elizabeth Fuller, 1834, who married Nathaniel
Morton; Leavitt Taylor, 1837, who married Louisa A. Bradford, and
Mrs. Anna V. (Wright) Southgate, Lemuel Fuller, 1839, Helen F.,
who married Edward G. Hedge, and Sarah B., and died September 24,
1871. Nathan Bacon Robbins owned and occupied the house now owned
and occupied by Mrs. Frederick N. Knapp, and was a shipmaster by
profession, sailing I believe, chiefly in the employ of John and
James N. Sever of Kingston. One of the ships commanded by him was the
Brookline. Born in 1797, he married in 1819, Lucia W., daughter of
George Rider, and second in 1830, Lucia Ripley, of Kingston, and died
December 24, 1865.