Old Days at Beverly Farms

by Mary Larcom Dow

My grandfather did not go much to church but he loved his Bible and Psalm book and from several things that I remember about him, I think he was Unitarian in belief, though in those days I did not know a Unitarian from a black cat, and whenever I heard of one, I supposed he must be a terrible kind of being. I was a grown woman, when one day, speaking of Starr King and his love for the White Hills and his loyalty in keeping California in the Union during the Civil War, the woman to whom I was speaking said "Well, he wasn't a good man." "Not a good man," I said. "Why" said she, "You know he was a Universalist." We have got on a little since that time in toleration, but we need to get on a little more.

My uncles on my mother's side were great hunters. Foxes and minks and woodchucks were plentiful in those days and a good many of them fell into my uncles' traps. I remember remonstrating with my uncle "Ed Larcom," about traps, telling him it was cruel, and that I didn't see how a good kind man like him could earn his living that way. "Oh," he said, "They were made for me!" Doesn't the Bible say "And he shall have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over all the cattle, and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth?" My uncles all said there was no better eating than a good fat woodchuck; that the chucks fed on grain and roots and clean things. The manner of cooking was to parboil them, stuff with herbs and bake.

Some years ago, I was invited to join the Daughters of the Revolution, and to this end to look up my ancestry. To my surprise I could not find a single forbear of mine who was connected in any way with wars or rumors of wars, and I reported that I hadn't been able to find any of my kin who ever wanted to kill anything but a woodchuck. Since this writing, my cousin, Dr. Abbott, still living, at the age of ninety-five in Illinois, has informed me that my remote ancestor, Benjamin Ober, did valiant work on the sea in the Revolution.

Elsie Doane seems to think that these scraps of antiquity would not be quite satisfactory without mention of "Jim" Perry's grocery store, though she never bought a pound of coffee in it, and, if she says she did, she thinks she is her mother. It was our only store and so was quite a feature. It was presided over by Mr. James Perry, a tall dignified man, whom his wife in her various offices as helpmate, always called "Mr. Perry." Mr. Perry was color blind and whenever my mother sent me for blue silk or blue yarn, he always selected green or purple.

You may wonder how blue silk comes to be a grocery product, but this was really a department store. When we had a half cent coming to us, Mrs. Perry always produced a needle, for the exact change. You see how honest we were! This honest department store stood, in fact it was Pump Cottage, for I think Pump Cottage is the same old jackknife with different blades and handles. Farther up, on the Wenham Road, lived Deacon Joseph Williams, a beautiful old gentleman, with a disposition as sunny as a ripe peach. His house was small and his family large. All the Williamses in this region would look back to that little house as their old family homestead, and I was sorry when Mr. Doane decided that it could not be remodelled, but had to be taken down.

Deacon Williams had a dog, a little black fellow named Carlo, who always followed the good man about except on Sundays. On Sundays, Carlo took a look at his master and then went and lay down dejectedly. But, as I have intimated before, when you remember the Sundays of those days, a sensible dog really had the best of it. In a former page of these odds and ends of memory I have mentioned Uncle Ed Larcom and his fondness for hunting. A good many of us aborigines of old Beverly Farms will remember his talks of his dog Tyler, a mongrel dog, half bull dog and half Newfoundland, as Uncle Ed pronounced it. Tyler, according to his master (and his master was the most accurate teller of stories that ever lived, always telling his yarns in exactly the same words,) was a most remarkable dog, understanding what one said to him as well as a man, going a mile if he were merely told to fetch a missing jacket, and as full of fun and tricks as a monkey. Uncle Ed used to delight his young audiences with anecdotes of Tyler, and in his old age, when mind and memory began to fail, it was rather hard to hear him say, "Did I ever tell you about my dog Tyler?"

He must have been named for John Tyler. It was hard on a good dog to be named for John Tyler, one of the poorest presidents we ever had.

There seems to be a great deal of interest among our summer people in the old houses still left at Beverly Farms. I have mentioned the James Woodbury house now owned by Mr. J. S. Curtis; another very old house is the William Haskell house, owned by Mr. Gordon Dexter. I have a little doubt as to whether the date on the house is right. I have a very strong impression that Aunt Betsey Larcom, born Haskell, told me in my childhood that her father built the house in which Aunt Betsey was born, in 1775. She also said that when they dug the well back of the house, they struck a spring and were never able to finish stoning it, a fact which accounted for its never running dry, when all the other wells in the village gave out. I think Mr. Dexter bought it of the James Haskell heirs, but I am not able to state what relation James Haskell (Skipper Jim) was to Mr. William Haskell, or how he came into possession of it.

I wonder how many people are now left in Beverly Farms who ever tasted food cooked in a brick oven. I am sure there are not many. But those of us who ate of an Indian pudding or a pot of baked beans from that ancient source of supply will never forget the deliciousness of that kind of cookery.

The pudding would stand straight up in its earthen pan, a quivering red, honey-combed mass, surrounded with a sea of juice to be eaten with rich real cream in clots of loveliness. The beans would be brown and whole, with the crisp home cured pork on top. That old New England cookery, it seems to me, filled a big bill for health and physical nourishment. We did not know much about proteins and calories and fibrins, in fact, we had never heard of them. But we somehow hit upon the best combinations as to taste and efficiency. We almost never had candy, and we rarely had all flour bread. A good deal of Indian meal went into my mother's bread.