Plymouth memories of an octogenarian

by William T. Davis

CHAPTER XXXI.

The following professional men have not heretofore been mentioned in these memories:

Dr. F. G. Oehme, a German homeopathic physician, came to Plymouth about 1857, and occupied for a time the house on Middle street, now owned by Charles H. Frink, and later bought the house on Court street occupied in recent years by George E. Morton. He had an office at one time in the second story of the building on Main street, now occupied by H. H. Cole. He sold his dwelling house in 1873 to Martha T. Bartlett, the widow of Ephraim Bartlett, and removed to Long Island, from thence going to Portland, Oregon, where he died in 1905.

Dr. Ervin Webster, born in Vermont, January 25, 1828, came to Plymouth in 1850, and established himself as a botanic physician in the rooms on Main street, now occupied by Loring’s watchmaker’s store. With his son, Olin E., four years of age, he was drowned in Billington Sea, August 28, 1856.

Dr. George F. Wood, son of Isaac Lewis and Elizabeth (Robbins) Wood, was born in Plymouth, March 12, 1841. He married Sarah E., daughter of Sylvanus Harvey, and established himself as a physician in an office on the North side of Town Square. He died October 27, 1868.

Dr. Nathaniel Lothrop, son of Isaac and Priscilla (Thomas) (Watson) Lothrop, was born in Plymouth in 1737, and graduated at Harvard in 1756. He married first, Ellen, daughter of Noah Hobart of Fairfield, Conn., and second, Lucy, daughter of Abraham Hammatt of Plymouth, and died October 9, 1828.

Dr. Robert Capen taught a private school in Plymouth in 1828, and in 1830 was practising medicine with an office in the Marcy house, which stood on North street, where Dr. W. G. Brown’s house stands. I do not know either the date or place of his death.

Dr. Mercy B. Jackson, widow of Daniel Jackson, belonged to the Homeopathic school and practiced in Plymouth and Boston, and died in 1877.

Dr. Isaac LeBaron, known in my day as an apothecary, was always called Doctor, but I do not know that he was educated as a physician. He lived through my early youth in a house standing on the upper corner of Leyden street and LeBaron Alley, and had his shop in a one story building on Main street, where Dr. Hubbard’s house now stands. At a later time he lived in the house on the corner of North and Main streets, and had his shop in the same building. He married in 1811 Mary Doane of Boston, and died, January 29, 1849.

Dr. Parker came to Plymouth about 1882 and occupied for a short time the house now owned by Arthur Lord, but whence he came and where he went I do not know.

Dr. Warren Peirce succeeded Dr. Parker, and occupied the same house until it was sold to Mr. Lord, when he moved to the house at the lower angle of Carver street. He was born in Tyngsboro, Mass., Nov. 30, 1840, and graduated at the Harvard Medical School in 1869. He enlisted May 11, 1864, in Co. K First Regiment of Heavy Artillery of Massachusetts, and was appointed Hospital steward. After he received his degree he practised some years in Boylston or West Boylston. He was the son of Dr. Augustus and Alectia (Butterfield) Peirce. His father was born in New Salem March 13, 1803, and died in 1849. Dr. Warren Peirce died in Plymouth, July 10, 1898.

Dr. Francis B. Brewer had in 1850 an office at the corner of Main and Middle streets, but I do not know whether he was engaged in general practise or exclusively in that of dentistry. He was succeeded in the same year by Dr. Robert D. Foster, who advertised himself as having had “the most ample experience in operative surgery, both in England and the United States.”

In September, 1855, Dr. James L. Hunt occupied the office which Dr. Brewer and Dr. Foster had occupied, but I know neither his specialty nor the length of his service in Plymouth.

Dr. Andrew Mackie, son of Dr. Andrew of Wareham, was born in 1799, and graduated at Brown in 1814. He came to Plymouth in 1829, and lived on the corner of Market and Leyden streets, and in the house next below the rooms of Mr. Beaman on Middle street. He removed to New Bedford soon after 1832.

Dr. John Flavel Gaylord, son of Ebenezer and Jane (Phelps) Gaylord, was born in Amherst, Mass., March 22, 1852. He fitted for college at the Hopkin’s Grammar school and graduated at Yale in 1876. He took his degree from the Yale Medical school in 1878, and completed his studies in 1879 and 1880 at the University of Berlin, and at Heilbronn. On his return home he practised a few years in Cincinnati, and settled in Plymouth in 1889, where he married Susan, daughter of William Rider Drew, and died April 14, 1903.

Dr. Charles James Wood came to Plymouth in 1866 and settled in Chiltonville. He was son of Leonard Wood, and was born in Leicester, Mass., February 18, 1827, and was educated at the Leicester Academy. He practised in Barre, Chiltonville, Sandwich and Pocasset, in which latter place he died August 25, 1880. I remember him as attending with Dr. Alexander Jackson in Manomet Ponds, the sailors who were wrecked in the bark Velma in 1867. He was the father of General Leonard Wood, now in the Philippines, who attended school in Chiltonville.

Dr. John C. Bennett appeared in Plymouth in 1835, and advertised himself an eclectic physician “formerly professor of obstetric medicine and surgery.” The various medicines prepared by him were claimed to be infallible ones for many diseases; and of a tooth extractor invented by him, it was said by an enthusiastic friend that it made the extraction of a tooth an operation of pleasure instead of pain. He married Sally, daughter of Job Rider of Plymouth, and lived and had his office on Summer street. The introduction by him of the Plymouth Rock breed of fowls gave him a reputation of a more substantial character than his medicines. In 1842 he published “The History of the Saints,” an expose of Joe Smith and Mormonism.

Dr. John Bachelder, son of John and Mary Bachelder, was born in Mason, N. H., March 23, 1818, and graduated at Dartmouth in 1841. He began to practice in Monument in 1844, and married Martha Swift Keene of Sandwich, September 30, 1846, afterwards removing to Plymouth, where he died October 28, 1876.

Of Dr. Benjamin Hubbard I make an exception among the living physicians, and include in these memories a notice due to his age and long practice in Plymouth. He was born in Holden, Mass., November 25, 1817, the son of Benjamin and Polly (Walker) Hubbard. He came to Plymouth in 1840 and studied medicine with his brother, Dr. Levi Hubbard, and after attending one term at the college at Woodstock, Vt., graduated at the Pittsfield Medical college in 1844. After receiving his degree he practiced six months in South Weymouth, and then came to Plymouth, succeeding his brother, who removed in the autumn of 1844 to New Bedford. Aside from his practice he has been assiduous in his devotion to the welfare of the Baptist Society, which owes him a debt which it gratefully acknowledges, but can never repay. He married June 29, 1844, Ellen Maria, daughter of Elisha Perry of Sandwich, and is enjoying in a serene old age the love and respect of the community, whom for more than sixty years he has faithfully served.

William Davis, son of Nathaniel Morton and Harriet Lazell (Mitchell) Davis, was born in Plymouth May 12, 1818. He fitted for college at the Boston Latin school, and graduated at Harvard in 1837. He studied law with his father, and at the Harvard Law school, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar January 18, 1841. In those days it was the custom in the Harvard Law school to hold a moot court once each winter for which the jury was drawn from the senior class in college, and lots were drawn among the senior law students for the positions of senior and junior counsel on each side. William M. Evarts was in the law school, and having come from Yale college with a high reputation for eloquence, it was taken for granted that if unsuccessful in the drawing, one of the successful ones would surrender his place to him. Mr. Davis, one of the successful ones, declined to give up his position as senior counsel for the defendant, but a place was given to Mr. Evarts as senior counsel for the plaintiff. As Mr. Davis lived in Boston with his grandmother, he was little known by his fellow students, and when the trial came on the lecture room of the school was crowded with law students and undergraduates to hear the eloquent man from Yale. I was one of the jury, and I remember well the astonishment with which the masterly speech of Mr. Davis was received. Some years afterwards Mr. Richard H. Dana, who was a member of the law school at the time, told me that the unanimous verdict of the school was that Mr. Davis was the star of the occasion. Mr. Evarts was eloquent, but Mr. Davis possessed a grace of gesture and speech which caused his hearers to ask who the man was who had overmatched the eloquence of the man from Yale.

Mr. Evarts lost his eloquence as his practice at the bar increased, and he became addicted to the use of long sentences, which made his hearers wonder how he could escape from his labyrinth of words without forgetting his nominative. He said to a friend who criticized this defect in his rhetoric that in his long experience at the bar the prisoner in the dock was the only person who objected to long sentences. He was a man of humor, and while secretary of state in the cabinet of President Hayes, who never had wine on his table no matter who were his guests, he said one day to a lady sitting next to him at the state dinner, when the Roman punch was served—“Ah, we have reached the life saving station.” The next day when a friend asked him how the dinner went off he said, “Splendidly, water flowed like champagne.”

Returning from this digression, Mr. Davis settled in Plymouth, and was appointed in 1844 aide with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel on the staff of Governor George N. Briggs, and in 1850, 1851 and 1852, was chairman of the Board of Selectmen. From 1844 to 1852, he was Vice-President of the Pilgrim Society, and from 1848 to 1850 inclusive, a Director of the Plymouth Bank. He married December 2, 1849, Helen, daughter of John and Deborah (Spooner) Russell, and had Harriet Mitchell in September, 1850, who died in December, 1852, and William, September 27, 1853. He died February 19, 1853.

William H. Whitman, son of Kilborn and Elizabeth (Winslow) Whitman, was born in Pembroke, January 26, 1817. He studied law with Thomas Prince Beal of Kingston, and began practice in Bath, Maine, where his sister, Sarah Ann, the wife of Benjamin Randall lived. He moved to Boston in 1844, where he practiced law until 1851, a part of the time a partner of Charles G. Davis. In 1851 he was appointed clerk of the Courts of Plymouth County, and continued in office until his death. He married in 1846, Ann Sever, daughter of William and Sally W. Thomas, and had Isabella Thomas, Elizabeth H. and William Thomas. He married second, Helen, widow of Wm. Davis and daughter of John Russell, and had Russell, Winslow and Ann Thomas. He died August 13, 1889.

Jedediah K. Hayward was born in Thetford, Vt., August 14, 1835, and graduated at Dartmouth College in 1859. He studied law with Jesse E. Keith of Abington and Charles G. Davis of Plymouth, and was admitted to the Plymouth bar October 28, 1862. He practiced one year in Plymouth, then two years in Boston, and finally moved to New York in 1865, where he still lives.

William Harvey Spear came to Plymouth from Roxbury about 1845 to teach the High School, and while teaching, studied law. He was admitted to the Plymouth bar in 1848, and continued business in Plymouth until his death. He married May 1, 1831, Catherine Hinsdale, daughter of Nathan Allen of Medfield and Dedham, but I find no record of his death.

William F. Spear, son of Wm. H. and Catherine H. (Allen) Spear, was born in June, 1832, and was admitted to the Plymouth bar in 1853. He married Caroline Augusta, daughter of Elisha Whiting, and died in Plymouth, September 21, 1858.

There was an Edward L. Sherman practicing law in Plymouth about fifty years ago, but I know nothing about him. He may have been the Edward Lowell Sherman, a Harvard graduate of 1854, who was admitted to the Essex bar in 1856, and was practicing in Boston in 1860, and until his death in 1893.

Isaac Goodwin, son of William and Lydia Cushing (Sampson) Goodwin, was born in Plymouth, June 28, 1786. He studied law with Joshua Thomas, and began practice in Boston, afterwards removing to Sterling, and in 1826 to Worcester. In 1825 he published a book entitled “The Town Officer,” and in 1830 another on the duties of a sheriff, which was followed by a general history of Worcester County, written for the Worcester Magazine. At the 150th anniversary of the destruction of the town of Lancaster he delivered the oration. He married in 1810, Eliza, daughter of Abraham Hammatt, and had Lucy Lothrop, 1811, Elizabeth Mason 1813, Wm. Hammatt, 1817, John Emery, 1820, John Abbot, 1824, Mary Jane, 1834, who married Loring Henry Austin of Boston, and was the well known authoress. He died September 10, 1832.

Rev. Dr. Joseph Sylvester Clark, son of Seth and Mary (Tupper) Clark, was born in Manomet Ponds, December 19, 1800. Dr. Clark was born in a house nearly opposite the residence of the late Horace B. Taylor. His brother Israel, one of the purest of men, was on the board of selectmen with me in 1855, and lived at the time in the old homestead.

In 1818 Rev. Seth Stetson, the pastor of the Manomet church, became Unitarian, and in the temporary division of the church which followed, Dr. Clark’s father was one of Mr. Stetson’s followers. As late as 1819 it seems to be certain that the son had not been able to believe in the divinity of Christ, and he did not become a member of the church until June 9, 1822, after which time he was a member in full standing of the Orthodox Congregational church. At the age of seventeen Dr. Clark taught school in Manomet, and soon after in Hingham, and by his earnings as a teacher and the moderate assistance which his father could afford to render, he was enabled to enter the classical academy at Amherst on the 29th of July, 1822, and to enter Amherst college in September, 1823, where he graduated in due course with valedictory honors. In 1827, after a short service as tutor at Amherst, he entered the Andover theological seminary, and after intervals spent in teaching school, graduated in 1831. On the second of October, 1831, he preached at Sturbridge, Mass., and on the twenty-seventh was unanimously invited to become the successor of Rev. Alvan Bond in that town. His ordination followed on the twenty-first of December. On the twenty-eighth of May, 1839, he was appointed secretary of the Massachusetts Missionary Society, and severing his connection with the Sturbridge parish, he entered on the discharge of the duties of secretary continuing them until his resignation on the twenty-third of September, 1857. In 1858 he published “A Historical sketch of the Congregational churches of Massachusetts from 1620 to 1858.” Dr. Park said of him “his experience in the Home Missionary work convinced him that Congregationalists had sacrificed the spiritual welfare of their own churches to an ill-regarded zeal for harmony with other denominations. They had cultivated such a dread of sectarianism as induced them to abandon their own distinctive principles for the sake of living in peace with sectarians who became the more exclusive as Congregationalists became the more liberal.”

At the time of the formation of the Congregational Library Association, he was chosen its Corresponding Secretary in May, 1853, and its financial agent in June, 1857, and soon after united with Rev. H. M. Dexter, and Rev. A. H. Quint, in publishing the Congregational quarterly, the first number of which was issued in January, 1859. To his unremitting labors was largely due the consummation of the project to buy for the Association the Crowninshield building, which it long occupied on the corner of Beacon and Somerset streets in Boston. In 1851 he received from his Alma Mater the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and in 1852 was chosen a trustee of the college. He married December 27, 1831, Harriet B., daughter of Joseph Bourne of New Bedford, and died at the home of his brothers, Israel and Nathaniel, at Manomet, August 17, 1861.

Rev. Ezra Shaw Goodwin, son of General Nathaniel and Ruth (Shaw) Goodwin, was born in Plymouth in 1787, and was settled as pastor of the first church in Sandwich. He married Ellen Watson, daughter of John Davis, and died in Sandwich, February 5, 1833.

Rev. Hersey Bradford Goodwin, son of William and Lydia Cushing (Sampson) Goodwin, was born in Plymouth, and graduated at Harvard in 1826. He graduated at the Harvard Divinity school in 1829, and was settled in Concord. He married in 1830, Lucretia Ann, daughter of Benjamin Marston Watson of Plymouth, and had Wm. Watson, 1831. He married second, Amelia Mackie of Boston, and had Amelia and Hersey Bradford, and died in 1836.

Rev. Thomas Weston, son of Coomer and Hannah (Doten) Weston, was born in Plymouth, August 30, 1821. He prepared for the ministry at the Meadville school in Pennsylvania, and was settled at various times over Unitarian societies in Northumberland, Penn., Bernardston and New Salem, Mass., Farmington, Maine, and Barnstable and Stowe, Mass. He married April 29, 1852 Lucinda, daughter of Ralph Cushman of Bernardston, and died in Greenfield, Mass., March 29, 1904.

Rev. James Augustus Kendall, son of Rev. Dr. James and Sarah (Poor) Kendall, was born in Plymouth, Nov. 1, 1803, and graduated at Harvard in 1823. He was settled in Medfield six years, and after spending a short time in Stowe and Cambridge, he removed to Framingham, where he married May 29, 1833, Maria B., daughter of Col. James Brown, and died May 16, 1884.

Rev. Sylvester Holmes, son of Sylvester and Grace (Clark) Holmes, was born in Manomet Ponds April 6, 1788, and was ordained as minister in 1811. He was for many years engaged in the service of the American Bible Society, especially in the South, where he was everywhere known among leading men of both church and state. From 1861, until 1866, he was settled over the church at Manomet Ponds, where he married in 1810 Esther Holmes. He married a second wife, Fanny Kingman of Bridgewater, and died in New Bedford at the house of Ivory H. Bartlett, November 27, 1866.

Rev. William Faunce, son of Solomon and Eleanor (Bradford) Faunce, was born in Plymouth about 1815. In 1840 he organized a Christian Baptist Society, and built a meeting house near the Russell Mills. After a long pastorate he removed to Mattapoisett, where he died about ten years ago. He married Matilda, daughter of Josiah Bradford, and had Matilda B., 1835, who married Weston C. Vaughan, William, 1837, and Ellen, 1840.

Rev. Lewis Holmes, son of Peter and Sally (Harlow) Holmes, was born in Plymouth, April 12, 1813, and graduated at Colby University. He had settlements at various times over Baptist Societies in Edgartown, Scituate, Leicester and other places. He married Lydia K., daughter of Pickels Cushing of Norwell, and died May 24, 1887.

Rev. Russell Tomlinson, son of David and Polly (Sherman) Tomlinson was born in Newtown, Conn., October 1, 1808, and after fitting for the ministry was settled pastor over a Universalist Society in Buffalo, N. Y. In September, 1838 he came to Plymouth, where he was settled in May, 1839, pastor of the Universalist church as the successor of Rev. Albert Case. In 1867 he resigned his pastorate, continuing to live in Plymouth until his death, and devoting himself to the practice of homeopathy, and the advocacy of the cause of temperance. He married Harriet W., daughter of Charles and Mary Ann (Williams) May, and died March 4, 1878.

Rev. George Ware Briggs, son of William and Sally (Palmer) Briggs, was born in Little Compton, April 8, 1810, and graduated at Brown University in 1825. He graduated at the Harvard Divinity school in 1834, and was soon after settled in Fall River. In 1838 he was installed colleague pastor of Rev. Dr. Jas. Kendall of the First Church in Plymouth, continuing in that pastorate until 1852. January 6, 1853, he became pastor of the First Church in Salem. On the first of April, 1867, he resigned the Salem pastorate, and in that year became pastor of the Third Congregational Church in Cambridge, located in Cambridge Port, where he remained until his death, having a colleague in his later years. He married first Lucretia Archbald, daughter of Abner Bartlett, and second in 1849, Lucia J., daughter of Nathaniel Russell of Plymouth. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from Harvard in 1855, and died in Plymouth, September 10, 1895.

Rev. Daniel F. Goddard, son of Daniel and Polly (Finney) Goddard, was born in Plymouth about 1828, and married in 1854 Mary E., daughter of Ellis Barnes. He studied for the ministry, and was settled in various places, including, I think, Harvard and Weymouth. He died in 1883.

Rev. Dr. Daniel Worcester Faunce, son of Peleg and Olive (Finney) Faunce, was born in Plymouth, January 3, 1829, and graduated at Amherst in 1850. He studied for the ministry at the Newton Theological Institute, and was ordained in 1853. He married, August 15, 1853, Mary P. Perry, and in 1871 Mary E. Tucker. He was settled in Washington, D. C., and Pawtucket, R. I., and was the author of a number of religious works. His home is now in Providence, near that of his son, Rev. Wm. Herbert Perry Faunce, President of Brown University.