Mr. Storer acted as the agent of Mary, wife of the Rev. Benjamin Gerrish Gray, of Windsor, N. S., who was the heiress of Mary Gooch, who resided at Marshfield, Mass., at the time of her death. Mr. Gray was a son of Joseph Gray of Boston and Halifax, N. S., a loyalist. Mary, the heiress, was a daughter of Nathaniel Ray Thomas, a loyalist of Marshfield, who had married Sally Deering, a sister of Mary Gooch of Marshfield.
The property was sold by Mrs. Gray, June 9, 1795, to James Tisdale, a merchant, who bought also adjoining lots. It was at this time that the Golden Ball disappeared from Merchants’ Row, where it had hung as a landmark for about a century. Tisdale soon sold his lots to Joseph Blake, a merchant, who erected warehouses on the site.
There was still an attraction in the Golden Ball, however, and in 1799 we find it swinging in Wing’s Lane, now Elm Street, for Nathan Winship. He was the son of Jonathan, and born in Cambridge. In 1790 he was living in Roxbury. He died in 1818, leaving a daughter Lucy. He had parted with the Golden Ball long before his death.
In 1805 there was erected in South Boston a building by one Garrett Murphy. It stood on Fourth Street, between Dorchester Avenue and A Street, and here he displayed the Golden Ball for five years, as his hotel sign. Just a century ago, in 1810, for want of patronage, it became a private residence. About 1840 the hotel was reopened as the South Boston Hotel.
From South Boston the Golden Ball rolled back to Elm Street, and in 1811 hung at the entrance of Joseph Bradley’s Tavern. From this Golden Ball started the stages for Quebec on Mondays at four in the morning. They arrived at Concord, N. H., at seven in the evening. Leaving there at four Tuesday morning, they reached Hanover, N. H., at two in the afternoon, and continuing on arrived at Haverhill, N. H., near Woodsville, at nine Wednesday evening.
The next appearance of the Golden Ball was on Congress Street, where at No. 13 was the new tavern of Thomas Murphy in 1816.
Henry Cabot, born 1812, was a painter, and first began business at 2 Scollay’s Building in 1833. He removed to Blackstone Street in 1835, where he was located at various numbers till 1858, when he went to North Street. He resided in Chelsea from 1846 till his death in 1875. The occupation of this owner of the Golden Ball was that of an ornamental sign and standard painter. His choice of a sign was not according to the traditions of his trade, and did not conform with the painters’ arms of the London Guild Company, which were placed on the building in Hanover Street by an earlier member of that craft. It was no worse choice, however, than a sign which some of us may recall as swinging on Washington Street, near Dock Square, fifty years ago, “The Sign of the Dying Warrior, N. M. Phillips, Sign Painter.”
The Golden Ball was the sign anciently hung out in London by the silk mercers, and was used by them to the end of the eighteenth century. Mr. Cabot’s choice of a location to start his business life was more appropriate than his sign, as in the block of shops, owned by the town, connecting on the west side of the Scollay’s Building, had been the paint shop of Samuel, brother of Christopher Gore.