Through all my boyhood Nathaniel Morton Davis occupied the house on
Court street, now owned by the Old Colony Club, except for a year,
when, while repairing the house, he occupied for a year or more the
house on Leyden street, which his mother had occupied before her
removal to Boston. The house at that time had its front door on the
southerly side where an arch may now be seen in the front hall.
On the west side of the front door there was a good sized parlor,
which reached within about three feet of the street. What is now the
library, lapped far enough by the above parlor to admit of a door
from one to the other, and was the law office of Mr. Davis, with an
outside entrance north of the parlor above mentioned.
Mr. Davis was the son of William and Rebecca Morton Davis, and was
born in Plymouth March 3, 1785. He graduated at Harvard in 1804, and
after studying law with Judge Joshua Thomas, was admitted to the bar
in Plymouth. He was appointed early in his career Judge Advocate,
with the rank of Major, which title he bore through life. In 1821
he was appointed Chief Justice of the Court of Sessions, and served
until the court was abolished in 1828. He was at various times
representative and senator, and was a member of the executive council
from 1841 to 1843. He was a director of the Plymouth Bank from 1826
to 1839, and from 1840 to 1848, and President from 1840 until his
death. He was a man of commanding presence, an impressive speaker,
and was selected on several public occasions to act as presiding
officer. The first time I saw him in the President’s chair was at a
whig county celebration on the Fourth of July, 1840, when the chief
address of the day was made by Robert C. Winthrop. His speech and
his toasts calling up the speakers were unusually happy. Martin Van
Buren, who had succeeded Andrew Jackson as President, and was a
candidate for re-election, had many times boasted of following in the
footsteps of his illustrious predecessor, and Mr. Davis gave as one
of the sentiments, “Martin Van Buren, he has followed so fast in the
footsteps of his illustrious predecessor, that he has accomplished
his journey in half the time.”
Mr. Davis married, July 8, 1817, Harriet Lazell, daughter of Judge
Nahum Mitchell of East Bridgewater, and his children were William,
born May 12, 1818, who married December 2, 1849, Helen, daughter of
John Russell; Abby Mitchell, born November 9, 1821, who married in
1841 Robert B. Hall, and Elizabeth Bliss, born November 8, 1824, who
married Henry G. Andrews. Mr. Davis died at the United States Hotel
in Boston, July 29, 1848.
In 1849, William Davis, previous to his marriage, cut off the
westerly end of the house in question, and it was moved to a lot
on Court street, opposite the foot of Cushman street, where it now
stands the property of Charles B. Bartlett. I have never known a more
complete mutilation of a house than that caused by the alteration to
which I have referred.
Before leaving Mr. Davis I must tell a story about his dog Ponto,
which illustrates the intelligence often found in the canine race.
He was an ordinary black and white cur, which, as is often the
case with favorite dogs, was equally a delight to his master, and
a nuisance to everybody else. He was in the habit of following the
family to church, and after being kicked out by the sexton, he would
slyly find his way in, and going up the broad aisle, scratch at the
family pew door. In order to stop this habit, orders were given to
keep him confined to the house on Sundays, to which Ponto demurred.
After suffering confinement two Sundays he circumvented the orders
and through the first door or window which happened to be opened,
every Sunday morning at the earliest opportunity he left the house
and fled to the house of Nathaniel Holmes, on School street, who
did the family chores, and there passed the day, returning home in
the evening. He knew when Sunday came by symptoms, which he easily
discovered, and while never going to the Holmes house at any other
time, he kept up his weekly visits for many months, until sickness or
accident ended his career.
Ponto reminds me of another dog which belonged to John J. Russell,
when he lived in the Cotton house, which stood where Brewster street
enters Court street. Mr. Russell bought of Warren Douglas of Half Way
Pond one of a litter of hound pups with the agreement to take him
when he became old enough to be of use. When he thought it about time
to bring him home he went for him, and it being a rainy day he held
the pup by a chain between his feet beneath the boot which excluded
all sight of the road over which he had never before travelled. At
the end of a fortnight, thinking that the pup had been chained to his
kennel long enough to become domesticated, he unfastened his chain
with the intention of giving him his breakfast. Preferring, however,
freedom to breakfast, the pup hopped over the fence, and was last
seen running up Court square. Mr. Russell, thinking he might have
found his way to Half Way Pond, drove there the next day, and there
was the pup. On comparing notes with Mr. Douglas, it was found that
the little fellow had travelled ten miles in less than two hours.
So much for the instinct of Ponto and the hound pup. If we ask what
instinct is, it might be correct to say that it is the gift of God
unimpaired by education. The homing pigeon has it when she finds her
way to her distant nest. The Indian has it somewhat qualified by
civilization when he laughs at the white man who needs a watch to
show the lapse of time. The Christian has it, beyond the realm of
reason, a divine teacher assuring him of a life beyond the grave,
a belief in which the device of human education has done much to
impair if not destroy. But without further suggestion I submit these
mysteries to the investigation of my readers and pass on.
The Old Plymouth Bank building stood until recently where the Russell
building now stands. It was bought by the bank at the time of its
incorporation in 1803, and a brick addition was erected at its
southerly end for the accommodation of the bank. William Goodwin,
who had served as cashier from the foundation of the bank, died
July 17, 1825, and Nathaniel Goodwin was chosen to succeed him. He
moved at once into the bank house, and continued to occupy it until
his resignation as cashier in 1845, when he moved into the house
on the corner of Middle and Carver streets, where he died February
13, 1857. In early life he carried on the manufacture of rope in
Nantucket, and later in Beverly. He was the son of General Nathaniel
Goodwin, and was born in 1770 in the house on Leyden street, owned
and occupied by his father, and afterwards long kept as a hotel by
John Howland Bradford, and known as Bradford’s tavern. He married
in 1794 Lydia, daughter of Nathaniel Gardner of Nantucket, and had
seven children, only four of whom I remember, Lydia Coffin, 1800, who
married Thomas Hedge; Albert Gardner, 1802, who married 1831 Eliza
Huzzey of Nantucket, and 1840 Eliza Ann, daughter of Joseph Bartlett,
and Nathaniel, 1809, who married, 1833, Arabella, daughter of William
White of New Bedford. Mr. Goodwin was the last person in Plymouth to
wear a cue. Mrs. Goodwin was a quakeress, always wearing the garb of
her faith, which was further illustrated by her gentle spirit and
kindly words.
That part of the house used for a dwelling was occupied at various
times after Mr. Goodwin moved to Middle street by Samuel Lanman,
George F. Andrews, and Frank A. Johnson, the last of whom kept
a public house under the name of the Winslow House. The old
banking room was used by Daniel J. Jane and Samuel Merriam, shoe
manufacturers; Charles F. Hathaway, for a general store; Joseph P.
Brown, cabinet maker, and Frank A. Johnson in connection with his
hotel. It is only necessary to say further in connection with the old
bank building that it was taken down and the Russell building erected
on its site in 1892.
Daniel J. Lane manufactured one hundred thousand pairs of boots and
shoes annually, and gave employment to about one hundred and sixty
hands. There were other manufacturers of shoes about the same time,
of whom it will be well to speak: S. Blake & Co., who made one
hundred and twenty thousand pairs, employing about two hundred hands,
having their headquarters in Leyden hall building; John Churchill,
Benjamin Bramhall, William Morey, Henry Mills and Nathaniel Cobb
Lanman, in whose shop on Allerton street William L. Douglas was a
workman.
George Gustavus Dyer came to Plymouth with Mr. Blake from Abington,
and after serving as bookkeeper for his company, was elected cashier
of the Old Colony Bank. Mr. Dyer was the son of Christopher and Mary
(Porter) Dyer of Abington, and married in 1852 Mary Ann Bartlett,
daughter of Schuyler Sampson. After some years’ service as cashier
of the Old Colony Bank, he was chosen President, and died January 9,
1891.
The shoe business in the days to which I have referred was conducted
very differently from the methods in vogue today. The headquarters
not necessarily extensive, were used for the reception of stock,
the cutting of the leather, the shipment of shoes and the business
office. When the leather was cut shoemakers would call periodically
for packages of uppers, and linings and heels, and making the shoes
at home would bring them to the office and carry home a new supply.
They would furnish their own tools and thread and nails and pegs,
and consequently the need existed of local stores, such as that
which was kept on Main street by Harrison Finney for shoe kit and
findings. These shoemakers did their work at home, and there was
scarcely a house in the smaller towns which did not have its small
shop on the premises where the cut material was converted into shoes
for the more or less distant manufacturer. In consequence of the
change above mentioned, the local kit stores were abandoned, and
there was a gradual flow of population from the farming towns where
the little workshops were located to the large towns, Abington,
Brockton, Rockland, Plymouth and Whitman, where the factories were
built. This is one of the causes of the falling off of population in
the smaller towns, and of the rapid growth of the larger ones. There
are indications now of a reflex tide, as a result of the facilities
afforded by trolley cars for workmen to seek distant homes where the
cost of living is moderate, and where in dull seasons farming can be
carried on with profit.
The building which stood on the corner of Court and North streets,
which was taken down and replaced by the Howland building in 1888,
was occupied as long ago as I can remember by Dr. Rossiter Cotton.
He was the son of John and Hannah (Sturtevant) Cotton, and was born
in 1758. He married in 1783 Priscilla, daughter of Thomas Jackson,
and had nine children, of whom I only remember two, Charles, born in
1788, and Rowland Edwin, born in 1802.
Dr. Cotton practiced medicine in Plymouth about twenty years, and
retired from his profession in 1807. He seems to have inherited
the right to hold county offices. His grandfather, Josiah Cotton,
was Register of Deeds and County Treasurer from 1713 to 1756; his
father, John Cotton, held both offices from 1756 to 1789, and he
held the same offices from 1789 to his death, August 12, 1837.
His son, Rowland Edwin, continued in the office of Register from
1837 to 1846. Thus the office of Register was held in the family
through four generations, one hundred and thirty-three years, and
the office of Treasurer through three generations, one hundred and
twenty-four years. Dr. Cotton was an antiquarian, and I find on the
records many of his memoranda and plans, which aid materially in
elucidating matters which without them it would have been difficult
to understand. His son, Charles Cotton, graduated at Harvard in
1808, and settled as a physician in Newport, where he married a
Miss Northam, and had a family of children, of whom I only remember
four, Rossiter, Thomas, Charles and Sophia. He removed to Plymouth
in 1831, occupying the house under consideration, where he practised
until his father’s death in 1837, when he returned to Newport, where
he died. The three boys attended the high school with me, and must
have been all within two years of my age. I remember two incidents
of our school days, with which they are associated. I have referred
in a former chapter to the rule, while Mr. William H. Lord was the
teacher, for each boy to repeat at the opening of the school in the
morning a verse from the bible. One day Rossiter received a flogging
for some offense, and the next morning he repeated in his turn, “For
whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth.” The other incident occurred
while Mr. Isaac N. Stoddard was teacher. Dr. Cotton thought his son
Charles had been either unjustly or too severely whipped, so arming
himself with a whip he went to Mrs. Nicolson’s hotel where Mr.
Stoddard boarded, with the intention of flogging him. But he reckoned
without his host, and when he raised his whip, Mr. Stoddard, seizing
him by the collar, laid him on the floor, and taking his whip away
sent him home.
In 1833 scarlet fever prevailed extensively in Plymouth, and was
very fatal. In a population of 5,000 the number of deaths during the
year was one hundred and sixty-seven, of which sixty-seven were of
children under ten years of age. Taking the population of Plymouth in
1904 of 11,118, and the number of deaths in that year, one hundred
and fifty-seven, as a basis, the normal number of deaths in the
population of five thousand in 1833, would have been less than
seventy. I remember that a daughter of Dr. Charles Cotton, either
Sophia or another whose name I do not recall, died of the prevailing
disease, and that I was one of the pall bearers at her funeral. It
was the invariable custom in those days, never varied from, to have
pall bearers for old and young, and in cases of funerals of children,
Clement Bates, the sexton, would call at the High school and ask for
a detail of six boys for service at one or more of the funerals on
that day. As well as I can remember, no precautions were taken to
prevent the spread of the contagion, and funerals were attended as
usual, and no quarantine was established. I have no doubt that during
the visitation of the sickness I served as pall bearer at least a
dozen times.
Some years later I narrowly escaped serious inconvenience arising
from municipal precautions against contagious diseases. In February,
1857, I had a schooner in the West India trade, and when after her
departure from Boston in the early part of that month I thought
her well on her way towards her destination, I received a telegram
from Thomas Everett Cornish, her master, that she had been caught
by the ice in the bay soon after leaving Boston, and driven by the
prevailing northwest gales into Truro Bay, where she was in the ice
jam a week, during which she had received damages which she was now
repairing in Provincetown. I at once drove to Sandwich, and taking
the cars for Yarmouth, then the terminus of the Cape Cod Railroad,
drove to Truro, reaching there about midnight. The next morning
I hired a conveyance to Provincetown, reaching there for dinner.
After dinner I boarded the schooner, where carpenters were at work
getting out new stanchions for the damaged bulwarks. While talking
in the cabin with Capt. Cornish, who was bald, and had taken off his
hat, I noticed some pustules on his scalp which I saw at once were
the pustules of varioloid. Fearing that he might become sick and
would require a substitute for the voyage, I called on Dr. Stone,
who fortunately was an old friend, and took him to see the Captain,
whom he at once declared suffering from a mild attack of varioloid,
which, however, would not prevent his prosecution of the voyage. He
said that he was the port physician, and that it would be his duty
to report the case to the board of health. Fortunately I had said
nothing at the hotel concerning my business, or my connection with
the schooner, and I exacted a promise from Dr. Stone to say nothing
about me. Not long after the departure of the Doctor we heard while
sitting in the cabin a hail from the head of the wharf commanding the
captain to haul at once into the stream and have no communication
with the shore. A watchman was placed at the head of the wharf by
the board of health, and I began to wonder how I was to escape a
quarantine. I waited until after dark and then giving the captain
directions to proceed to Boston with the first favorable wind, I went
ashore, and sneaking up behind a store house with only the cap log of
the wharf to walk on, I found an opening between two buildings about
four feet wide, and came out on the street unobserved. As I walked to
the hotel I found the town in a panic, and groups were standing here
and there discussing the situation. I spoke to no one but on reaching
the hotel gave orders to be called to take the six o’clock mail
chaise, and went to bed. At six o’clock I was off and reached home
the same day. It was eight days before my vessel was able to reach
Boston, and thus I narrowly escaped a prolonged confinement on board,
and the watchfulness of the Provincetown board of health. In view of
my experience I advise my readers in visiting a town, to follow my
example, and say nothing and keep open the avenues of retreat.
After the death of Dr. Rossiter Cotton in 1837, and the return of
his son to Newport, the house in question was kept as a hotel named
the Mansion House for some years by James G. Gleason, succeeded by
Benjamin H. Crandon and N. M. Perry. In still later years the post
office occupied the corner room down stairs for a time, and the
Custom House a room upstairs, until finally the whole upper part of
the building and the northerly and easterly part below were occupied
by newspaper offices, and the corner by Charles P. Morse for a drug
store, until the building was taken down in 1888. Since the mention
of N. M. Perry in a previous chapter, I have learned that he was a
native of Holliston.
There are several estates on the west side of Court street, whose
occupants have not been noticed. Opposite the head of North street
there was in my youth the Lothrop estate, on which a house stood,
which was occupied by Dr. Nathaniel Lothrop, until his death, October
10, 1828. Dr. Lothrop was the son of Isaac and Priscilla (Thomas)
(Watson) Lothrop, and was born in the house in question in 1737.
His mother married in 1758, Noah Hobart of Fairfield, Connecticut,
who had a daughter Ellen by a previous wife. This daughter, Ellen
Hobart, married Nathaniel Lothrop, and thus Nathaniel Lothrop married
his mother’s step-daughter, and Ellen Hobart married her father’s
step-son. I leave my readers to determine the relationship between
them. In 1831 the Lothrop house was taken down, and while its
demolition was going on, I a boy of nine years of age, saw quantities
of papers thrown out of the garret windows, and picking up many of
them carried them home. I found them on examination to be official
papers with autographs bearing date from 1675 to 1700. These I
arranged in an album, and have recently presented them to the Pilgrim
Society. In 1832 the northerly part of the lot was sold to Jacob H.
Loud, who built the house now owned and occupied by Mrs. Francis B.
Davis.
The southerly part of the lot was sold in 1839 to Nathaniel Russell,
Jr., who built the house now occupied by Col. William P. Stoddard,
and occupied it until his father’s death in 1852, when he moved into
the brick house on the corner of Court Square, which had been his
father’s home. At his removal the house was left furnished, and was
occupied during the summer of 1853 by Richard Warren and family of
New York. From the autumn of 1853 to the autumn of 1854, the house
was occupied by myself, and there in the summer of 1854 my oldest
child was born. Not long after I left the house, it was occupied
by Rev. George S. Ball, during his pastorate as colleague of Rev.
Dr. Kendall. In 1857 the house was sold to Jeremiah Farris, whose
son-in-law, Col. Stoddard, now occupies it.
Mr. Russell was as has been before stated, the son of Nathaniel and
Martha (LeBaron) Russell, and was born in Bridgewater, December 18,
1801. He graduated at Harvard in 1820, and married, June 25, 1827,
Catherine Elizabeth, daughter of Daniel Robert and Betsey Hayward
(Thacher) Elliott of Savannah, Georgia, and died February 16, 1875.
Until 1837 he was associated with his father in the management
of the iron industries belonging to the firm of N. Russell & Co.,
composed of Nathaniel Russell, William Davis and Barnabas Hedge.
After the retirement of the Davis and Hedge interests from the firm,
Mr. Russell became a member of the firm of N. Russell & Co., and so
continued until the death of his father, October 21, 1852, after
which he continued the business until the sale of the Summer street
works in 1866 to the Robinson Iron Co.
During the exciting period of anti-masonry which extended from 1828
to 1835, an anti-masonic political party sprang up in many of the
Northern states, and candidates were generally nominated for State
and National offices. The party had its origin in the belief that
William Morgan of Batavia, New York, a former mason, who was reported
to intend publishing the secrets of the order of free masons, had
been kidnapped and drowned in Lake Ontario. It was believed that the
masonic oath disqualified those in the higher degrees from serving
as jurors in cases where members of the same degrees were parties.
The anti-masonic party originated in New York in 1828, and in 1830
Francis Granger, its candidate for Governor, received 128,000 votes.
In 1831 a National Anti-masonic convention nominated William Wirt
of Maryland, and Amos Ellmaker of Pennsylvania, for President and
Vice-President. Vermont was the only state which threw its electoral
vote for the anti-masonic candidates. The anti-masonic excitement
reached Plymouth, and for one or more years Mr. Russell was chosen
a member of the legislature on the anti-masonic ticket. I am not a
mason, but as a somewhat close observer of public affairs for nearly
seventy years, and many times a successful candidate for public
office, I feel bound to say that I have never suspected any masonic
participation either collectively or individually in the selection of
nominees to office, or the election of candidates.
In 1840 after the death of Barnabas Hedge, Mr. Russell was chosen to
succeed him as President of the Plymouth Institution for Savings,
which was incorporated in 1828, and continued in office until his
death. In 1847, during his incumbency, the name of the institution
was changed to the Plymouth Savings Bank.