CHAPTER XXVII.
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.