Plymouth memories of an octogenarian

by William T. Davis

CHAPTER XV.

The house adjoining the Baptist church, now occupied by the Custom House, recalls next to the house on Cole’s Hill, in which I was born, the pleasantest associations, and the dearest memories. In that building my grandfather William Davis, born July 15, 1758, lived from 1781, the year of his marriage, until January 5, 1826, the date of his death. He was the son of Thos. Davis, and one of a family of one daughter and six sons, Sarah, Thomas, William, John, Samuel, Isaac P. and Wendell. Sarah, born June 29, 1754, married LeBaron Bradford of Bristol, son of William Bradford, United States senator from the state of Rhode Island.

Thomas Davis, born June 26, 1756, was a representative from Plymouth, senator from Plymouth County, senator from Suffolk County, treasurer and receiver general of the Commonwealth from 1792 to 1797, and president of the Boston Marine Insurance Company from 1799 until his death, January 21, 1805. I have on my walls the barometer which hung in the insurance office at the time of his death.

John Davis, born in Plymouth, January 25, 1761, graduated at Harvard in 1781, and entered the legal profession. He was the youngest member of the convention on the adoption of the state constitution, and in 1796 was appointed by Washington comptroller of the United States Treasury. In 1801 he was appointed by John Adams, Judge of the United States Court for the district of Massachusetts, and continued on the bench forty years. He was treasurer of Harvard College from 1810 to 1827, a Fellow of Harvard from 1803 to 1810, and President of the Massachusetts Historical Society from 1818 to 1843. He died in Boston, January 14, 1847.

Samuel Davis, born March 5, 1765, was a well known antiquarian, a learned linguist, and a recognized authority on questions relating to Indian dialects. He was a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, recipient of an honorary degree from Harvard in 1819, and died in Plymouth, July 10, 1829. He is worthily commemorated by the following inscription on his gravestone on Burial hill:

“From life on earth our pensive friend retires,

His dust commingling with the Pilgrim sires;

In thoughtful walks their every path he traced,

Their toils, their tombs his faithful page embraced,

Peaceful and pure and innocent as they,

With them to rise to everlasting day.”

Isaac P. Davis, born October 7, 1771, was for many years an extensive manufacturer in Boston, owning a rope walk on the mill dam, now Beacon street, and perhaps was more widely known socially in Boston than any man of his time. He was a friend of artists, and a patron of art, whose judgment and taste were freely consulted by purchasers. Stuart, the portrait painter, was his intimate friend, and the horse in the Faneuil Hall picture of Washington, is a portrait of a horse owned by Mr. Davis. After the completion of the picture he presented the study from which it was painted, to Mr. Davis, a picture about 20 by 24 inches, which after the death of Mrs. Davis was sold by Josiah Quincy, and myself, her executors, to Ignatius Sargent, for three thousand dollars. The friendship between Mr. Davis and Mr. Webster may be judged by the following affectionate dedication to him of the second volume of Mr. Webster’s works, published in 1851.

My dear Sir:

“A warm, private friendship has existed between us for more than half our lives interrupted by no untoward occurrence, and never for a minute cooling into indifference. Of this friendship, the source of so much happiness to me, I wish to leave, if not an enduring memorial, at least an affectionate and grateful acknowledgment. I dedicate this volume of my speeches to you.

Daniel Webster.”

Wendell Davis, the youngest brother of my grandfather, born February 13, 1776, graduated at Harvard in 1796, and was clerk of the Massachusetts senate from 1802 to 1805. He studied law with his brother John, and settled in Sandwich. He served by appointment of the Governor as sheriff of Barnstable county, and died, Dec. 30, 1830. He was the father of Hon. George T. Davis of Greenfield, whom Thackery declared the most brilliant conversationalist he had ever met.

My grandfather, William Davis, born July 15, 1758, was trained in the business of his father, Thomas Davis, who was largely engaged in navigation and foreign trade, and with whom he became associated. After the death of his father, March 7, 1785, he continued the business of the firm of Thomas and William Davis with marked success until his death. Notwithstanding the depressing effects of the embargo, and the war of 1812, from which many suffered, I have been unable to discover in his files of business letters any indications of serious injury to his vessels or his trade. My father, William Davis, who died March 22, 1824, at the age of forty-one, was for some years associated with his father in business. My grandfather was representative and member of the executive council, and twenty-five years a member of the board of selectmen. It is perhaps worthy of mention that the services of members of four generations of my family as selectmen, cover a period of fifty-two years. Mr. Davis was also one of the founders of the Plymouth Bank, and its President from 1805 until his death, and one of the founders of the Pilgrim Society, and its first Vice-president.

Before leaving my grandfather’s family I trust that I may be excused for referring to his daughter Betsey, or Elizabeth, as she was called late in life. She was born in the house under discussion, October 28, 1803, and until thirteen years of age attended private schools in Plymouth. After that time for three years, until she was sixteen, she attended the school of Miss Elizabeth Cushing, in the family of Deacon Wm. Cushing of Hingham. Miss Cushing’s school was probably not surpassed by any ladies’ school in the country, and there a solid foundation was laid, which served my aunt so well as the wife of Mr. Bancroft, during his services as minister at London and Berlin. History, geography and public affairs were her special subjects of study, and while in London it was said by Englishmen, that she was so familiar with English politics as to be able to discuss them, and hold her own with the leading statesmen of the Kingdom. To show the extent of her early reading, when a girl, or a young woman, she listened one Sunday to a sermon preached in the Plymouth pulpit by a minister of a Plymouth County town exchanging with Dr. Kendall, which was much admired. It seemed to her that she had read it somewhere, and on going home, succeeded in finding it in a volume of sermons by Rev. Newcome Cappe, an English clergyman, who became pastor of a dissenting congregation in York and served from 1756 to near the end of the century. After looking the sermon over and verifying her suspicions of a wholesale plagiarism, she laid the book down on the centre table with the title in plain sight. In the evening the clergyman called at the house, and during his visit, much to the embarrassment of the hostess, and doubtless to his own bewilderment, sat with the book at his elbow, and the title staring him in the face. I prefer not to mention his name, but my older readers may identify him when I say that invariably when he preached in Plymouth, as he often did, he selected for one of his hymns that from Peale Dabney’s collection, with the familiar verse:

“Mark the soft falling snow,

And the diffusive rain;

To heaven from whence it fell,

It turns not back again;

But waters earth through every pore,

And calls forth all her secret store.”

She married in 1825, Alexander Bliss, law partner of Daniel Webster, who died July 15, 1827, and in 1838, married George Bancroft, the historian, who found in her efficient aid in the performance of his duties as secretary of the Navy, under President Polk, as minister to England from 1846 to 1849, and later as minister to Berlin.

It was my fortune to be in London in the month of February, 1847, during her residence there, and to receive from her and Mr. Bancroft many acts of kindness. It was during the Irish famine, and a benefit was planned to be held at Drury Lane Theatre, to add to the Irish charitable fund. There was no public sale of tickets, but a committee took the house from parquette to ceiling, and sent tickets for whole boxes to such members of the nobility as were available, and to the diplomatic corps, with prices affixed, which of course were taken regardless of cost in the nature of subscriptions, and tickets for the parquette to such single persons as they thought expedient. Mr. Bancroft’s box containing four chairs, was occupied by himself and Mrs. Bancroft, Henry H. Milman, then distinguished as an historian, poet and dramatic writer, and Professor of poetry at Oxford, but later known as Dean of St. Paul’s, and myself. In the dramatic world Mr. Milman was known as the author of the tragedy of Fazio, which I have seen played at the old Tremont theatre by Forrest and the elder Booth. The royal box, directly opposite in the same row, was occupied by Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and the Duke of Cambridge. In the box next to the royal box were the Duke of Wellington and the Marchioness of Douro, while others whom I remember in other boxes were the Duke of Devonshire, the Earl of Westminster, the Duke of Norfolk, Hon. Mrs. Norton, Sir Robert Peel, Lord John Russell, Lord Lyndhurst, Macaulay, Hume, and Lord George Bentinck. I was undoubtedly the only American in the house, and probably the only one in the audience whom the society reporter of the Times could not call by name.

At a dinner at Mr. Bancroft’s, I had an opportunity of meeting Thomas Carlyle, and I was astonished at his bitter denunciation of men and events, and his almost brutal speech. While the Irish question was under discussion, Duncan C. Pell of New York, one of the guests, asked him what he would do with the Irish, and bringing his hand down roughly on the table he growled out, “I would shoot every mother’s son of them.” I could not help contrasting his coarseness with the sweet and gentle spirit of Ralph Waldo Emerson, his friend on our side of the ocean.

Through the kindness of Mr. Bancroft I had an opportunity of seeing most of the above named statesmen in their seats in Parliament during a discussion on the corn laws, with the addition of Daniel O’Connell, who upon the whole, I think, was the most striking looking man I saw in England. During the discussion to which I have referred, Lord George Bentinck, who was well known for his fondness for horses, and the race course, made a speech which placed him on the side of the protectionists against Sir Robert Peel, whom he had before ardently supported. Sir Robert in a reply full of sharp invective said, “It is far from my intention to charge the honorable member with inconsistency, when he is universally known as a man of stable mind.”

After the death of my grandfather in 1826 my grandmother continued to occupy the family mansion until 1830, when she removed to Boston, where she died, April 1, 1847. For a year or more after her departure, the house was occupied by her son, Nathaniel Morton Davis, while his house on Court street, now owned by the Old Colony Club, was undergoing alterations and repairs. In 1832 it was sold to Wm. Morton Jackson, who moved into it from his former residence in North street on the corner of Rope Walk lane, where the house of Isaac M. Jackson now stands. Mr. Jackson fitted the front west room for a store, and removed his business in dry goods from the building on the corner of Summer street and Spring Hill, which was taken down about 1890. In 1851 Mr. Jackson, who had been collector of the port from 1845 to 1849, sold the estate to Mrs. Sarah Plympton, and removed to Boston, where he engaged in the wholesale grocery business on State street, nearly opposite Merchants’ Row. During its ownership by Mrs. Plympton, it was occupied as a boarding house at various times by Ephraim Spooner, Mrs. Wm. H. Spear and Mrs. Ephraim T. Paty, and was sold in 1878 by her executor to George F. Weston, Charles O. Churchill and Samuel Harlow, with whose ownership and the erection of the Rink in 1884 my readers are familiar.

As long ago as I can remember, the next estate on the west, on which the store of W. H. H. Weston stands, was occupied by a building in the lower story of which Zaben Olney and Jas. E. Leonard kept a flour and grain store, established by them in 1827, and in the upper story of which the Custom House was located. In 1831 Harrison Gray Otis Ellis, succeeded Olney and Leonard in the store, but in 1832 gave up business, and the building was sold to the Old Colony Bank, then recently organized. The Custom House continued to occupy the second story until 1845, when Gustavus Gilbert occupied it for a time as a law office. In 1846 Steward and Alderman, who had bought the building of the Bank in 1842, sold it to Wm. Rider Drew, who moved the building back, and added a new front, as the building stands at the present time.

In 1845 Custom House was located in a room on the north side of the house at the corner of North and Main streets, where it remained through the administrations of Mr. Jackson, Thomas Hedge and Edward P. Little, until 1857.

James Easdell Leonard, the partner of Zaben Olney, was a Plymouth man, the son of Nathaniel Warren Leonard, and married Abby, daughter of John Bishop, and step daughter of Ezra Finney, and lived for a time in the southerly half of the double house, recently owned and occupied by the late George E. Morton. Zaben Olney came from Rhode Island, and what his occupation was before he entered into partnership with Mr. Leonard, is not within my remembrance. He married in 1816, Rebecca Morton, and in 1862, Olive P. Wolcott. For some years after 1837, he kept the Old Colony House in Court Square, and for several years after 1854, a hotel in the old Barnabas Hedge house on Leyden street, now owned and occupied by Wm. Rider Drew.

Harrison Gray Otis Ellis, who succeeded Olney and Leonard, came to Plymouth, from Wareham, but was in business here not more than a year, during which time he married Margaret D., daughter of Jeremiah Holbrook. He removed to Sandwich, where I think he kept for a number of years a dry goods and clothing store. Steward and Alderman, who owned the building from 1842 to 1846, and Alderman and Gooding kept during that time dry goods stores in it.

Most of my readers will remember that in 1883 the corner of Market and Leyden streets was cut off by the county commissioners. At that time the old building on the corner was moved down Market street, and the present brick building put up on the new line of the street. As long ago as I can remember, in 1829, the old house was kept as a hotel by Wm. Randall. Built by William Shurtleff in 1689, it had twice before been used as a hotel, once in 1713 by Job Cushman, and again in 1732 by Consider Howland. In 1831 Mr. Randall occupied a part of the house as an auction room, and in 1832 he established with Lucius Doolittle a line of stages to Boston, which preceded the famous line established by George Drew. The stage office was in the corner room, and the stable was on the corner of School street and Town Square. In 1835 James C. Valentine had a harness shop on the corner, and later was succeeded by Martin Myers and Wm. Hall Jackson in the same business. Chandler Holmes and Lysander Dunham occupied the store until the building was moved. After William Randall, the residential part was occupied, at various times by Dr. Andrew Mackie, Sylvanus Bramhall, Wm. Rider Drew, James Thurber, David Drew, Isaac B. Rich and Mrs. M. J. Lincoln, the author of the Boston Cook Book. Wm. Hall Jackson, above mentioned, died February 3, 1869.

The occupants of the buildings on Market street, and the changes in the line of the street, which have been made within my recollection, come next in order. There was no change in the boundaries after 1715 until December 30, 1873, when the street was widened on the easterly side from the present bake house south. It was again widened November 5, 1883, by cutting off the Leyden street corner. Again on the first of January, 1890, it was widened on the westerly side of Spring Hill by the removal of the building there situated. At the time the Leyden street corner was cut off, the building next to the corner was taken down, and the corner building moved into its place. A new brick building was put on the corner with the history of which my readers are familiar. The house now standing next to the brick one has already been described as the house on the corner. As long ago as I remember the house which stood next to the corner, and was taken down in 1883, was built by Benjamin Bramhall, and was called the green store. In 1827 it was occupied at times by William Z. Ripley, who kept a dry goods store, Rufus Robbins, who kept what was called the Old Colony bookstore, Benjamin Hathaway, who kept a harness store, and Sylvanus Bramhall, silversmith. In 1833 it was occupied by James G. Gleason barber, in 1851, by James Kendrick, and later, by George A. Hathaway, bookseller, and Benjamin Churchill.

The next building was occupied in my boyhood by Deacon Nathan Reed, who had at an earlier date kept a store in the next building on the south. He owned a barn in School street, which was burned in January, 1835, and I remember that the only house taking fire from flying embers was his own dwelling on Market street. He died, January 12, 1842, and in 1856 his widow sold the house to Barnabas H. Holmes, who converted its lower rooms into a store, and occupied it for a tailor’s shop. It was later occupied by Benjamin Cooper Finney, as a store, and in 1883 was removed to the rear of the Brewster building on Leyden street, where it has since been used as a dwelling house with its old front room restored.

The next building was long known as the Shurtleff tavern and, before the revolution, was partially occupied by General Peleg Wadsworth for a private school. General Wadsworth’s daughter Zilpah married Stephen Longfellow, the grandfather of the poet. As long ago as I can remember its upper story was occupied by Robert Dunham, who owned a large stable in the rear, the entrance to which was through the yard on the south of the building in question. Mr. Dunham was connected with stage lines to Boston and Taunton in connection with George Drew, and died in 1833. He had three daughters, one of whom, Mary Ann, married Thomas Long, second cousin of Gov. John D. Long, and kept a milliner’s store on Summer street in the house which was afterwards occupied by the late Benjamin Hathaway.

The lower part of the Dunham building was divided into two stores. The northerly one was a candy store, kept by two ladies, who were known only as Nancy and Eliza. I wish to embalm their memories in gratitude for the satisfaction my youthful taste often received at their hands. They were, Nancy, a maiden lady, daughter of James and Bethiah (Dunham) Paulding, and Eliza (Rogers) Straffin, wife of George Straffin. They were succeeded by Stephen Rogers, who carried on the same business, and died, May 18, 1868. The other store was occupied by Lazarus Symmes, who had succeeded Nathan Reed, and who died, Dec. 25, 1851. After the death of Robert Dunham, the upper part was occupied by Daniel Deacon, who married, Mary, daughter of Thomas Torrance, and died March 13, 1842. The building in question was taken down, and the present building, recently owned by the estate of Zaben Olney, was erected on the northerly part of the lot, and on the southerly part the present bake house was erected by Samuel Talbot and George Churchill, bakers.

In my youth a building standing on the south side of the entrance to Dunham’s stable, was owned by Antipas Brigham, who occupied it as a dwelling house and store. Mr. Brigham died, August 6, 1832, and was succeeded in the occupancy of the store by William Barnes in 1832, and later by Stephen Lucas, Ephraim Bartlett, and Wm. Henry Bartlett. In 1827 Harvey Shaw, accountant, occupied the upper part for a time, and in 1845 Alvah C. Page occupied it for a writing school. The building in question was partially burned about 1870, and taken down, and in 1876 a building which had been occupied by Wm. Bishop and others, on the Odd Fellows’ lot on Main street, was moved to its site.

This last building, after its removal was occupied for a time by Thomas N. Eldridge as a dry goods store.

The next building has had its front altered into a store, but in other respects it remains as it was in my youth, when owned and occupied as a dwelling house by John Macomber. In 1874 it came into the possession of Josiah A. Robbins, and the store now standing on its south side was moved from the present site of the store of Christopher T. Harris.

The next house built in 1832 by Capt. Isaac Bartlett, came into the possession of John B. Atwood in 1855, who fitted up a store on its northerly side, and occupied the remainder as a dwelling. Capt. Isaac Bartlett was a shipmaster for many years, and made many voyages in the Havana trade between that port and Plymouth, in the brig Hannah, owned by Barnabas Hedge. I have distinct and agreeable memories of his arrivals with loads of molasses, some of which I licked from sticks introduced into hospitable bung holes, without money and without price. Captain Bartlett died, May 3, 1845. By his second wife, Rebecca, daughter of Caleb Bartlett, he had a son, Robert, born in 1817, and a daughter, Rebecca, born in 1819, both remarkable for minds capable of unlimited development and cultivation. Robert Bartlett, of whom I wish particularly to speak, was fitted for college in Plymouth by George Washington Hosmer and Addison Brown, both graduates of Harvard in the class of 1826; and graduated in 1836. He was tutor in Latin at Harvard from 1839 to 1843, when his early death destroyed the promise of a brilliant career. Aside from being a fellow townsman, I had an opportunity afforded by being a fellow boarder with him two years in Cambridge, of estimating his character and learning. I do not feel that I am violating any rules of propriety in speaking of a passage in his career, which gave me as a young man my first insight into the romances of life. He became engaged to my cousin, Elizabeth Crowell White, a daughter of Capt. Gideon Consider White, a lady of about his own age, and as remarkable as he in literary culture. After the death of her father and mother she was a member of my mother’s family until her death. In 1842, on a visit to relatives in Nova Scotia, she broke off her engagement with Mr. Bartlett, and soon after contracted a new engagement with an English gentleman. The blow to Mr. Bartlett was a severe one, and I remember well the visit which he made to our house on the afternoon of the day he received his letter of dismissal. After her return from Nova Scotia I was not long in discovering that her heart was still in the possession of her former lover, though she endeavored to conceal the fact. At this time an inherited tendency to a disease of the lungs began to show itself, both in her and in Mr. Bartlett, and in both cases, consumption rapidly performed its fatal work. She was soon confined permanently to the house, and he was obliged to abandon his college work, and return home to become like her a prisoner in his chamber and bed. He was brought from Boston in the steamboat, then running, and she, knowing that he was coming, sat by the chamber window on the north side of our house on Cole’s Hill, evidently anxious to catch a glimpse of one whom she had mistakenly cast off, but whom she still loved with all her heart. I remember well the tears she shed as he was carried up the street, and she saw him for the last time. Both failed rapidly. He died at his home, September 15, 1843, and she on the 7th of the next month, and both are buried in Vine Hills cemetery, united at least in spirit, where “they neither marry nor are given in marriage.”

It is not worth while to consider the occupancy of the remaining estates between the Isaac Bartlett house and the brook. It will be sufficient to say that the first building next to the Bartlett House was at one time occupied by Oliver Keyes, and again by Martin Myers, who kept a harness store on the corner of Leyden street. Two stores have been erected in front of the building which are occupied by C. T. Harris & Son, and by the Co-operative store. In 1828 a man named Joseph D. Jones, kept a tinman’s shop on Market street, but its precise location I cannot define. He advertised bulbous roots for sale, and we boys, always ready to adopt nicknames, called him bulbous Jones. He deserved a better name, for he was one of the best of men, conscientious in all his dealings, and a valuable citizen. At a later date he moved to a one story building on Main street, where Leyden Hall building now stands, after Dr. Isaac LeBaron, apothecary, had moved from it to the corner of North street. Rev. Adiel Harvey, pastor of the Baptist Society from 1845 to 1855, and superintendent of public schools from 1853 to 1859, married his daughter. About forty years after he left Plymouth I met him one day in Boston, and instantly recognizing him, called him by name, and had a pleasant conversation with him. Of course he failed to recognize me, but he expressed great pleasure at meeting some one from Plymouth, who could tell him about the doings in the old town. Twelve or fifteen years ago I was advertised to deliver an address before the Young Men’s Christian Union, and the old man considerably over ninety years of age, seeing the advertisement, came escorted by his daughter to hear me. He died not many years ago at the Old Men’s Home, on Springfield street, where he had been for some time an inmate, nearly if not quite, a centenarian.