CHAPTER VI.
To the remaining features of Water street about the year 1830, it is not worth while to devote much space or time. The two blacksmith shops were conducted by Henry Jackson, with whom his son, Henry Foster Jackson, was associated, opposite the head of Davis’s wharf, and by Southworth Shaw and his son Ichabod at the foot of Leyden street. A twelve-foot way from Leyden street, in direct continuation to Water street, separated the Shaw shop on the north from the building, which David Turner occupied as a pump and blockmaker’s shop on the south. Thus the blacksmith building, the northerly part of which was converted into a grocery store, was surrounded by Water street, Leyden street and the way above mentioned. There is a photograph in Pilgrim Hall of the above buildings as they were before the changes were made which resulted in the present condition of that neighborhood.
These blacksmith shops as I remember them were confined to vessel and general work, and did not include horse shoeing in their business. Joshua Standish came to Plymouth from Middleboro in 1828, and established a blacksmith shop opposite the jail on what is now South Russell street, and went into the shoeing business; and there were shops of Lewis Perry near Bradford street, of Ezekiel Rider at Hobbs Hole, of Caleb Battles at Bramhall’s corner, and of Isaac and Henry Morton at Chiltonville. The shop now on Summer street, and one carried on by Newell Raymond and Job Churchill at the head of North wharf, were started at a later period.
Henry Jackson lived in the house at the corner of Middle street and Cole’s Hill, and died there, September 29, 1835. His son, Henry Foster Jackson, who succeeded him in business, died in the same house, March 10, 1868. While I remember the personality of the father, I recall nothing of his character, but the fact that he was fourteen years a member of the board of Selectmen shows him to have been a respected and trusted citizen. The son, never taking special interest in town matters, was closely observant of public affairs, and was reliable authority on all questions relating to the nautical history of the town.
Southworth Shaw lived in the house now standing at the southerly corner of Court and Vernon streets, which had been occupied by his ancestors since 1701, when the southerly part of the house was built, and it is now owned and partially occupied by his granddaughter, Lucia Shaw, having been in the family more than two hundred years. He had seven children, Southworth, late of Boston, Ichabod, Betsey, who married the late Wm. Bramhall of Boston, Maria, Samuel of Plymouth, and the late George Atwood and James R. of Boston. He died January 18, 1847. His son, Ichabod, who continued the business, died March 20, 1873.
The two painters on Water street were Isaac and John Tribble. Isaac Tribble’s shop was on his own premises a little north of the blacksmith’s shop of Henry Jackson. He lived in the house to which his shop was attached, until 1834, when he bought the house recently standing next east of the house of John Russell on North street, where he died, Feb. 16, 1865. John Tribble’s shop stood north of the shop now occupied by Winslow B. Standish, and he lived at the corner of High street and Ring Lane, where he died, June 2, 1862.
The pump and blockmakers on Water street were John Sampson Paine and David Turner. Mr. Paine lived for some years in a building set back from Water street, and facing the way leading from that street to the Middle street steps, and his shop was in the brick basement of the house, and facing Water street. Many years before his death, which occurred September 29, 1878, he bought and occupied the Samuel Robbins’ estate on the north side of Middle street, including the hall, which for a long time was called Paine’s hall.
David Turner occupied a shop at the foot of Leyden street already described in connection with the Shaw blacksmith shop. Over his shop was a hall, long known as Turner’s hall, which was somewhat historic in its career. In that hall a public female school was first established in Plymouth in 1827, under the direction of the committee of the Central District. In 1827, Miss Laura Dewey from Sheffield, Mass., who married in 1832 Andrew Leach Russell of Plymouth, opened a private school for girls there, and in 1829 Horace H. Rolfe opened a private school. In 1832 Wm. H. Simmons, son of Judge Wm. Simmons of Boston, opened a private school for girls, and one of David Turner’s sisters, and Miss Louisa S. Jackson taught school there for a time. For many years it was a favorite hall for singing schools kept by Webster Seymour and Wm. Atwood and others. I have always looked on that hall as sacred to the memory of a lost musical genius, for on my second day’s attendance at Mr. Seymour’s school I was dismissed because I could not raise the octave. When I have heard some of my fellow pupils sing, who succeeded where I failed, I have regretted that the dismissals were not more general. If I am not mistaken, in that hall the Know Nothings held their meetings during their period of incubation before the demonstration of their strength in Town meeting in 1854. There also the Mayflower Lodge, I. O. O. F., was instituted Dec. 3, 1844. The hall was only about thirty-five feet long by about twenty wide, having an access to it by a flight of outside steps on the westerly end with a closed porch at the top. So deficient was the town in halls before Pilgrim Hall was built in 1824, and before the hall in the hotel on the corner of Middle street, built in 1825 was available, that dancing parties were often held in this hall, and I have heard my mother say that she once attended an anniversary ball there, use being made of the shop beneath for a supper room, to which access was had by means of a trap door in the floor, and a stairway built for the occasion. Mr. Turner lived in a house a little west of his shop on Leyden street, and died May 14, 1869.
The two sailmakers were Daniel Goddard, with a loft at the southerly corner of Hedge’s wharf and Water street, and David Drew at a later period, with a loft in the Bramhall building south of the way leading to the Middle street steps. Mr. Goddard lived next to my mother’s house on Cole’s Hill, and I had occasion many times as a boy to thank him for his kindness. If I wanted a ball of twine for my kite he gave it to me, and if I picked out a pumpkin from the products of his farm for a jack lantern, he made me a present of it. He was farmer as well as sailmaker, and employed on his farm as well as in his loft, Alpheus Richmond, his brother-in-law, and his brother Nathan and John A. Richmond, the son of Alpheus. Associated with him in the loft was Lemuel Simmons, brother of his wife, who a few years after the death of Mr. Goddard, which occurred October 30, 1844, retired from business. Mr. Goddard married Beulah Simmons, and I have the liveliest recollections of her house and neat kitchen and cool dairy, where I, or some other member of our family, had our milk pail filled with morning and evening milk. Those were not the days of milk carts, for a large portion of the families in town kept cows, and those who did not, sent daily to some neighbor who did. The building up of the town has so far reduced available pasturage near its centre that reliance for a supply of milk now rests entirely on the remote districts of Plymouth and on the adjoining towns. Not long ago I saw an old assessor’s book for the year 1748, when with a population of about eighteen hundred, there were kept in town four hundred and thirty-eight cows, one for about every four of all the men, women and children. In the last year, 1904, with a population of about eleven thousand, there were three hundred and forty-seven cows, or one for every thirty-two inhabitants.
In 1831 there were three or four besides Mr. Goddard, who kept small herds of cows, and among them was Lemuel Stephens, who near his residence at the foot of Fremont street, then known as Stephen’s lane, had an abundance of pasturage. In the above year Mr. Stephens had a milk cart, supplying customers, and I remember his son Lemuel calling at our house on the morning of the 21st of November of that year, and telling us that the new Unitarian church had that morning been struck by lightning. The son, Lemuel, must have been either merely assisting the driver of the cart, or driving it temporarily during Thanksgiving vacation, as in that year he entered Harvard College at the age of seventeen, and graduated in 1835. The mention of his name recalls an incident in his life as Professor in later years in Girard College. With many people the memory of Stephen Girard, the founder of the college was held sacred, and one of the articles on exhibition was a suit of clothes which had been worn by him. Professor Stephens told me that during the absence from home one Saturday afternoon of himself and wife, he found on his return that quite a party had visited his house. “What did they want,” asked the Professor of the servant. “Oh, sir, and for sure, they wanted to see Brother Stephens’ old clothes.” “Well Bridget, what did you do?” “Oh, and for certain, I showed them some old clothes of your own hanging on a line in the attic, and sir you ought to have seen what a time they had over them, stroking and kissing them, and almost crying over them.” “Well, Bridget,” said the Professor, “if they call again, you may tell them they may have the lot for five dollars.”
As I am getting somewhat garrulous and running away from the main thread of my narrative, I may be excused if I tell another story, which the mention of Girard College suggests. It is well known that Mr. Girard provided in his will that no clergyman should ever be admitted to the grounds and buildings of the college. Some years ago a convention was held in Philadelphia of the Masonic order, of which Dr. Winslow Lewis of Boston, a distinguished physician and surgeon, was a member. One of the entertainments provided for the convention was a visit to Girard College. Dr. Lewis, whom I remember well, always wore a high white clerical cravat, and as the procession marched into the grounds, an official at the gate said to him—“excuse me sir, but you cannot be admitted.” “The hell I can’t” said the Doctor. “Walk in sir,” said the official. It is an interesting commentary on the will of Mr. Girard that profanity could serve as a ticket of admission where the insignia of religion failed.
Returning from this digression, as I have spoken of Mrs. Goddard, I cannot refrain from saying a word about her brother, Capt. George Simmons, the father of the late George Simmons. He sailed for my father and grandfather many years in command of the brig Pilgrim in foreign trade, and was one of their most efficient and trustworthy captains. My father was in Boston in 1824, fitting the brig for a voyage, when he was taken sick, and Captain Simmons brought him home in a chaise, to die two days later. He named his second son Wm. Davis Simmons, born in 1811, the master of the ill-fated packet Russell, after my grandfather, and a daughter, Joanna White, born in 1826, after my mother. It always gave me pleasure to meet and talk with him when in later years, enfeebled by lameness, he was employed as weigher of coal at the pockets on the wharves. He died, July 26, 1863, at the age of eighty-one years. I know no family with more marked physical traits than the family of which he and Mrs. Goddard and Lemuel Simmons were conspicuous members. I have noticed these traits in other families in Plymouth, not always the same, sometimes in figure, sometimes in walk, and again in voice, in mould of features, and in ways of doing things. They are such that neither time nor marriage can extinguish, and any close observer may have seen them in the Jackson, Kendall, Warren, Russell, Spooner and Simmons families, and in the Perkins family of Newfields street.
Not many years ago I was in the Town Clerk’s office, and seeing a man dismounting from a wagon in the Square, I said to the clerk, “I never saw that man before but I feel sure that his name is Simmons, or he has Simmons blood in his veins.” When I went out and addressed him as Mr. Simmons, I asked him if I was right in so calling him, and he said, “yes, that is my name.” “Where do you live?” I asked him. “In West Duxbury,” he replied. “Are you connected with the Plymouth Simmons family?” and he said he supposed he was distantly, but he was not acquainted with any of them. It has always been interesting to me to observe and study these family traits.
David Drew, the other sail maker, learned his trade of Mr. Goddard, and began business about 1840. He lived many years on Pleasant street, opposite Training Green, and died within a year or two, more than ninety years of age.
The old fashioned coopers who in the first half of the 19th century were numerous on Water street, have entirely disappeared. Mr. John C. Barnes now buys shooks and puts together twenty thousand barrels for cranberries annually. The coopers whom I recall were David and Heman Churchill, Otis Churchill, Winslow Cole, David Dickson, Ansel H. and Abner H. Harlow, Perez Pool and Gideon Holbrook.
Among the riggers who had their lofts on the wharves, may be mentioned, Lewis and Thomas Goodwin, John Chase, Merrick Ryder, Coleman Bartlett, Isaac J. Lucas and Peter W. Smith; and among the caulkers and gravers, Wm. Pearsons, Abbet and Atwood Drew, Clement Bates and Eliab Wood.
The master shipwrights, who ought to be mentioned were James Collins, Wm. R. Cox, Benjamin Bagnall, Richard W. Bagnall, Wm. Drew and Joseph Holmes; and among the ship carpenters were, Gamaliel Collins, Samuel Lanman, Elias Cox, Richard and Samuel West Bagnall, Abijah Drew, David Thrasher and Isaac Lanman.
The house carpenter mentioned on Water street was Benjamin Weston, who, associated with his brother Lewis, had a shop south of the bridge opposite the foundry. He lived for many years in the house inherited from his father, Lewis Weston, on North street, immediately west of the house of the late Edward L. Barnes, and died July 25, 1858.
Before closing this chapter it will be pertinent, in connection with those engaged in the equipment of vessels, to speak of the patent windlass invented by a native of Plymouth. Samuel Nicolson was the son of Thomas and Hannah (Otis) Nicolson, and was born in the house which formerly stood on the north side of Court square, Dec. 22, 1791. His father was a shipmaster, and in the revolution commanded the privateer sloop America, owned by Wm. Watson and Ephraim Spooner and others, carrying six swivels and seventy men, with Corban Barnes first lieutenant, and Nathaniel Ripley, second lieutenant, commissioned September 6, 1776. Mr. Nicolson invented in 1830 what is known as the Nicolson windlass, and was the patentee of other inventions, among which was the Nicolson pavement. He had two sisters, Hannah Otis, who married William Spooner, and Caroline, the wife of Edw. Miller, and the mother of the wife of Chief Justice George T. Bigelow. He died in Boston, January 6, 1866, and is buried on Burial Hill.