Plymouth memories of an octogenarian

by William T. Davis

CHAPTER III.

During my early life a house stood in North street between the house of Mrs. Ruth H. Baker and the present Plymouth Rock House, concerning the occupants of which I must say a word. It was a double house, the westerly end of which was occupied by Ebenezer Drew, his wife Deborah, or Aunt Debby, as she was called, and his brother Malachi. Ebenezer had no children and Malachi was a bachelor. They were the salt of the earth and the salt had not lost its savor. Without the three it would have been difficult for some of the neighbors, including my mother, to keep house. Malachi repaired the leaks in the roof, eased the doors, mended the chairs and kept the house generally in running order. Uncle Eben did the chores, fed and scratched the pig, sawed, split and piled the wood and wheeled our corn to the mill, taking care that Sylvanus Maxim, the miller, did not take out too much toll. In those days, every family bought or raised its own corn and sent it to the mill to be ground. When the steamboat arrived, if one happened to be running, Eben was always on the wharf with his handcart ready to take the luggage of passengers to their homes. I can see the old man now scraping with his jackknife the apples I occasionally gave him, which, with his loss of teeth, he could neither bite nor chew. He died January 6, 1851, at the age of 77 years.

But chief of “the blessed three” was Aunt Debby. She assisted in making soap and candles, would nurse the sick, diagnose the various diseases of children, such as measles, by their smell, administer picra and “yarb” tea, staunch the blood of a cut finger with cobwebs and with the buds of the balsam poplar, or balm of Gilead, heal the wound. She was the forerunner, too, of those who with no more accuracy than she exhibited, foretell the number of a winter’s snow storms. In my college vacation my first visit was always to her, and at Thanksgiving time it was often my privilege to bear a turkey and a couple of pies to her scanty board. She died April 15, 1844, at the age of 72. Peace to her ashes.

The easterly part of the house was occupied by William Collingwood, a worthy and intelligent Englishman, the father of our respected townsmen, George and James Bartlett Collingwood. He had been a manufacturer of pottery in Sunderland, in the shire of Durham, but owing to reverses he was induced to come to America, and took passage in 1819 with Capt. Plasket of Nantucket, bringing with him his wife Eleanor (Harrow) Collingwood and two sons, George and William, one year old. He settled in Nantucket, the home of Capt. Plasket, where he remained until 1825, when James Bartlett, who, with others, owned two ships in the whale fishery, induced him to come to Plymouth and take charge of the oil and candle works then recently established, which were situated between the house of the late Jesse R. Atwood and the shore. As long as the works remained in operation he was at their head, and afterwards for a time kept a restaurant at the corner of North and Water streets. He died in Plymouth in 1866, at the age of 76, and his wife died in 1884, at the age of 90. Three of Mr. Collingwood’s sons died in the civil war. Joseph W., born in Nantucket January 5, 1822, was captain in Company H, 18th Massachusetts regiment, and died in a field hospital December 24, 1862, of wounds received at the battle of Fredericksburg on the 13th of that month. John B., born December 30, 1825, was adjutant of the 29th Massachusetts regiment and died in St. John’s Hospital in Cincinnati, August 21, 1863. Thomas, born November 10, 1831, was a corporal in Company E, 29th Massachusetts regiment, and died at Camp Banks, Crab Orchard, Ky., August 31, 1863.

In 1843 Mrs. Collingwood was summoned to England to secure by identification an inheritance of property. She had then reached middle life, but, nevertheless, without a companion or attendant, she sailed on the 1st of July in the above year in the Cunard steamer Columbia, from Boston for Halifax and Liverpool. The Columbia, like all the earliest boats of the Cunard line, was a paddle wheel boat of about 1,200 tons. I know very well what those boats were, for I made a passage in the Hibernia of the same line in March, 1847, and I often wonder that in such small crafts, with one wheel buried in every roll of the sea, passengers were willing to expose themselves to the hazards of a winter passage. On Sunday, the second day out, when 240 miles from Boston, while still in charge of the pilot who, in accordance with the custom prevailing while the steamers called at Halifax, remained on board, the Columbia, in a thick fog, having been carried out of her course by an unusual Bay of Fundy current, struck a sloping rock on Black Ledge about a mile and a quarter from Seal Island, and 25 miles from Barrington, Nova Scotia, the nearest port on the mainland. Fortunately the sea was smooth and when the fog lifted a fishing schooner nearby came to the ship and with the boats of the steamer transferred to the island the passengers, 95 in number, including those in the steerage, and 73 officers and men, with luggage and the mails. The cargo was eventually saved, but the ship was a total loss. While on the island a sort of colonial government was established with Mr. Abbot Lawrence of Boston, one of the passengers at its head, to prevent excesses and possible disturbance, and a passing vessel was sent to Halifax with news of the wreck. In due time the steamer Margaret took them to that port, most of the passengers and crew continuing their passage in her to Liverpool. For the kindness and attention shown to Mrs. Collingwood by Mr. Lawrence she was always grateful. The valet of Mr. Lawrence was James Burr, a colored boy from Plymouth, who often with pride recounted to me the story of his adventure.

It is a little singular that our townsman, Robert Swinburn, recently deceased at an advanced age, came to Plymouth when a young man from Sunderland, the town in which Mr. Collingwood lived, and where he also was engaged in the employment of a potter, and should twenty years later than the voyage of Mrs. Collingwood have been also summoned to England for the purpose of obtaining an inheritance. A circumstance connected with the loss of the Columbia, which reminds us of the changes which have occurred in the facilities of communication, is the fact that the news of the wreck, which occurred on Sunday, the 2d of July, did not reach Boston until Sunday, the 9th.

I have given the loss of the Columbia a prominence in these memories because it was the only loss which the Cunard company has suffered during its career of 64 years, except that of the Oregon, a steamer sold to the company by another line after a collision and a transfer of her passengers to another vessel, which foundered near Fire Island. Two other ocean steamers had been previously lost, the President, with all on board, in 1841, and the West India packet steamer Solway, off Corunna, in April, 1843, with her captain and fifty lives.

Returning from this digression to North street, from which I have wandered long and far, I wish to correct a statement, based on misinformation, made by me in “Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth,” that the Willoughby house, built by Edward Winslow in 1755, was confiscated. Mr. Winslow held the office of collector of the port of Plymouth, registrar of wills and clerk of the superior court of common pleas, and the salaries from these offices, though he was not a rich man, enabled him to live in luxury and ease. He was generous to the poor and lavish in his entertainment of families in the aristocratic circles. He was a loyalist of the most pronounced type, and consequently lost his offices at the breaking out of the revolution. As nearly as I can learn from family records he remained in Plymouth several years, evidently assisted by friends, some of whom in a quiet way shared his loyalty to the king. In December, 1781, he reached the British garrison in New York with a part of his family, the remainder joining him at a later period. Sir Henry Clinton allowed him a pension of £200 per annum, with rations and fuel. On the 30th of August, 1783, he embarked with his wife, two daughters and three colored servants from New York and arrived at Halifax on the 14th of September. He died in Halifax the next year, 70 years of age. The house in question was taken on execution by his creditors, consisting of the town of Plymouth, Thomas Davis, William Thomas, Oakes Angier and John Rowe, and in 1782, 1789, 1790 and 1791 it was sold by the above parties to Thomas Jackson. In 1813 it passed under an execution from Thomas Jackson to his cousin, Charles Jackson, the father of the late Dr. Charles T. Jackson and Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Edward Winslow, son of the above, graduated in Harvard in 1765, and at the time of the revolution was naval officer of the port of Plymouth and held the offices of clerk of the court and register of probate jointly with his father. He joined the British army in Boston and went with Lord Percy on his disastrous expedition to Lexington and Concord, and was later appointed by Gen. Gage collector of Boston and register of probate for Suffolk county. At the evacuation of Boston, March 17, 1776, he went with the army to Halifax, where he was made by Sir William Howe secretary of the board of general officers, of which Lord Percy was president, for the distribution of donations to the troops. He afterwards went to New York and was appointed muster master general of the forces, and acted in that capacity during the war. In 1779 he was chosen by refugees in Rhode Island to command them, and served during two campaigns. After the war he was military secretary until the death of his father, and in 1785 went to New Brunswick, where he held the positions of king’s counsellor and paymaster of contingencies, and died in 1815.

In the Winslow house above referred to Ralph Waldo Emerson married, August 22, 1835, Lydia Jackson, daughter of Charles and Lucy (Cotton) Jackson. I have a distinct recollection of the first time I ever saw Mr. Emerson, and I have no doubt that it was the first time he ever visited Plymouth. It was, I feel sure, in 1833, soon after he left the pulpit of the Second Unitarian church in Boston and after he had begun his career as a lecturer. It is said that his first lecture was delivered before the Boston Mechanics Institute on the very practical subject of “Water.” At the time referred to he lectured in Pilgrim Hall on Socrates, and was the guest of Nathaniel Russell, whose daughter, Mary Howland Russell, born in 1803, was an intimate friend of Lydia Jackson, born in 1802. I believe that I am justified in assuming that on that visit he first saw his future wife. I remember well his appearance and manners on the lecture platform, and as a boy of eleven years I thought him oracular and dull. In the same year the wandering piper with his kilt and bagpipe appeared also in Pilgrim Hall, and Potter, the ventriloquist, entertained audiences by swallowing swords, and I am almost afraid to say that the exhibitions gave me more pleasure than the lecture. But my eyes had not at that early age been opened. Dr. Holmes once asked an English gentleman to whom he had just been introduced, how he liked America, and on receiving the reply that he had been in the country only nine days, told him that a pup required only nine days to open its eyes. But the doctor never hesitated to sacrifice courtesy for the sake of a joke, as the following story will further show: Hearing one evening at a party the name of a gentleman present, whom he had never seen before, he asked him if he were a relative of an apothecary of that name, and on receiving the answer that he was his son, he told him that he thought he recognized in his face the “liniments” of his father. But to return to Mr. Emerson, my eyes have been opened.

In concluding the changes which have occurred in North street within my recollection, it only remains to be said that the Manter building on the corner of Water street was removed in 1859 from Pilgrim wharf, and stands on land formerly occupied by a tenement house, and by a small one-story building occupied by Thomas Maglathlen.

Water street, including its extension, was laid out by various acts of the town, as follows: On the 16th of February, 1715, in 1762, on the 4th of April, 1881, the 9th of December, 1893, and the 22d of June, 1895. The changes on the extension of the street, caused by the erection of the woolen mill of Mr. Mabbett, the utilization of the old Jackson lumber yard by Mr. Craig and the erection of the Brockton and Plymouth trolley electric plant, have been so recent that no reference to them is necessary. With the exception of the foundry, which was built to take the place of the foundry burned in 1856, and the electric light building on the corner of Leyden street, no new structure has changed in my day the general character of the street.

In my youth, and later, there were eight buildings on the westerly side of the street between North street and the steps at the foot of Middle street. In the rear of these houses there were two terraces supported by stone walls, and some of the houses were entered by flights of steps leading down from the top of the hill. In 1856, and in the years immediately succeeding, the Pilgrim Society bought all these estates, and after the removal of the houses graded the slope as it is seen today. The granite steps from the surface of the hill to the canopy over the Rock was built by private subscription. The graded bank is the property of the Pilgrim Society, and the surface of the hill, which belongs to the town, was placed by a vote of the town under the superintendence and care of the society.

Until recently there were also eight buildings between the way leading to the Middle street steps and the grass bank on Leyden street. By the will of J. Henry Stickney of Baltimore, who died May 3, 1893, the sum of $21,000 was given to a board of trustees for the purpose of buying and removing these houses and grading the bank. The board of trustees consists of the chairman of the selectmen, the presidents of the two national banks, the president and secretary of the Pilgrim Society, the president of the Plymouth Savings Bank, and the judge of probate and treasurer of Plymouth county, and their successors in said offices. All the estates have been bought except that owned by Winslow Brewster Standish, and the grading as far as practicable has been done.

The only remaining change in the street to be referred to is that associated with Pilgrim wharf and the Rock. Until 1859 the wharf was devoted to commercial uses. In that year the upper part of the wharf came into the possession of the Pilgrim Society, and the building which had stood on the northerly corner of the wharf was moved to the corner of Water and North streets, and eventually came into the possession of Mr. Manter, its present occupant.

Two buildings on the south side, between the wharf and the store of Mr. Atwood, were also bought by the society and removed. That on the corner had for many years been occupied in its lower story by a cooper shop and in its upper story by the sail loft of Daniel Goddard, and the other had been occupied as a store successively by Richard Holmes, Holmes & Scudder, Holmes & Brewster and John Churchill.

In 1883 the Pilgrim Society bought the entire wharf, and after removing the store houses standing on it fitted it for a steamboat landing exclusively. The corner stone of the canopy over the Rock was laid on the 2d of August, 1859, and the structure was completed in 1867. It was designed by Hammatt Billings, but follows very closely the plan of the Arch of Trajan built on one of the moles of the harbor of Ancona on the shores of the Adriatic. The use of scallop shells on its top was suggested by the fact that this shell was the emblem worn by the Pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. The word Pilgrim, as applied to the Plymouth colonists, was never used, as far as I can learn, for more than a hundred and seventy years after the landing. They were called “first-comers” and “forefathers” until 1794, when Judge John Davis, in his ode written for the anniversary celebration in that year first used the word “Pilgrim” in the following verse:

“Columbia, child of heaven,

The best of blessings given,

Be thine to greet;

Hailing this votive day,

Looking with fond survey,

Upon the weary way,

Of Pilgrim feet.”

The next use of the word was made by Samuel Davis in a hymn written by him for the celebration in 1799, the first verse of which is as follows:

“Hail Pilgrim fathers of our race!

With grateful hearts your toils we trace.

Again this votive day returns

And finds us bending o’er your urns.”

The word was undoubtedly suggested to Judge Davis by a casual remark of Governor Bradford in his history of Plymouth Plantation expressing the regret of the colonists at leaving Leyden, as follows: “But they knew they were Pilgrims, and looked not much on those things but lifted up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country, and so quieted their spirits.” The first use of the scallop shell associated with the Plymouth Pilgrims was at the anniversary celebration in 1820, when at the ball in the evening some young ladies hung a shell suitably decorated on the breast of Mr. Webster, the orator of the day. It simply expresses the sentiment that man is a wayfarer travelling toward another and a better world. I have seen it somewhere stated that it was worn by the Pilgrims returning from the Holy Land, and if such is the case as the scallop is abundant on the shores of the Mediterranean, it may have been adopted to attest their pilgrimage. In the chamber of the canopy are deposited four skeletons of Pilgrims buried in the winter of 1620-1 on Cole’s Hill, which were discovered in 1854 by workmen digging a trench for laying water pipes in Carver street, a little south of the foot of Middle street.

Before concluding what I have to say concerning Water street with its business, its stores and their occupants, I wish to refer more particularly to Plymouth Rock and its history, to supply necessary links in the chain of my narrative. Its first public recognition as the landing place of the Pilgrims occurred in 1742, after a grant had been made to individuals by the town of a strip of land extending from the top of Cole’s Hill to low water mark, for the purpose of building a wharf. Thomas Faunce, the third elder of the Plymouth church, born in 1647, was ten years old when Governor Bradford died in 1657, twenty-six years old when John Howland died in 1673, thirty-three years old when George Soule died in 1680, and forty years old when John Alden died in 1687, all of whom were Mayflower’s passengers. Hearing of the proposed wharf, and believing that the Rock would be buried from sight, he gathered on the spot his children and grandchildren and told them the story of the landing, which he had received from the Pilgrims themselves. Dr. James Thacher was told of this incident by witnesses of the scene, and through the channel of his history of Plymouth, the authenticity of the Rock has become a matter of historic record.

The second recognition of the Rock as the place of the landing, occurred in 1774, when the inhabitants of Plymouth under the lead of Col. Theopilus Cotton assembled about it with about twenty yoke of oxen, with the view of removing it to Liberty Pole square, as they called Town square, and consecrating it to the shrine of liberty. In attempting to raise it it separated into two parts, one of which was permitted to remain and the other was carried to its destination. There it remained until 1834, resting against the lower elm tree on the southerly side of the square. In that year the fourth of July was celebrated by its removal to the front yard of Pilgrim hall. A procession, of which Capt. Samuel Doten was marshal, preceded by the school children of the town, escorted a decorated truck bearing the Rock, then weighing 6,997 pounds, which was followed by a model of the Mayflower mounted on a car and drawn by six boys, of whom I was one. The Plymouth Band and the Standish Guards performed escort duty, and on reaching Pilgrim hall an address was delivered by Dr. Chas. Cotton, and a prayer was made by Rev. Dr. James Kendall. The ceremonies of the day closed with a dinner served in the basement of the hall by Danville Bryant, proprietor of the Pilgrim House, at which Hon. Nathaniel M. Davis presided, assisted by Hon. Isaac L. Hedge, Abraham Jackson, John Bartlett 3d, Nathaniel Wood and Eliab Ward as vice presidents. In June of the next year the Rock, in its new place, was inclosed by an iron fence designed by George W. Brimmer of Boston, the designer of the Gothic meeting house of the Unitarian parish, and so remained until 1880, when it was removed without display and placed within the canopy on that part of the Rock from which it was separated one hundred and six years before. The iron fence has since that time served to inclose a granite memorial in front of Pilgrim Hall bearing on its face the text of the Pilgrim compact.

As far back as I can recall, in 1832, Water street retained much of the business aspect, which had characterized it for about seventy-five years. The whaling and fishing industries were active and prosperous and Boston had not yet drawn away from Plymouth any considerable portion of its foreign trade. Molasses and sugar from the West India Islands, salt from Turks Island and Cadiz, and iron from Gothenberg, continued to come in, the last free of that burdensome duty, which has destroyed the iron industries of the old colony. I can hear today the rattling of the bars which Stephen Thomas and others carted through our streets to the various manufactories established in Plymouth, Carver, Wareham, Plympton and Kingston. I can count within my memory twenty-six establishments engaged in the manufacture of iron in Plymouth county, while with only two or three exceptions the few now at work are in a languishing condition. I have letters in my possession written in Plymouth, opposing the imposition of high duties, and predicting as a result of their operation the very conditions which now exist.