Plymouth memories of an octogenarian

by William T. Davis

Of a home once beloved—but now no more.

What changes time has wrought in the scenes of my youth. One feature of these scenes is left to remind me of my Cole’s Hill home, which years have failed to erase. In my earliest youth nearly four score years ago a bed of bouncing betts bloomed on the grassy bank opposite our home, and it is blooming still as if contesting with me a race for the longest life. I visit it every year to make sure that it has not given up the contest, and when I stand by it it seems to say, “Ah, old fellow, I will beat you yet.” I hope you will, dear friend of my youth, and bloom on for generations to come, reminding others as you do me of my childhood days.

I have spoken of N. Russell & Co., and Jeremiah Farris and Bourne Spooner as connected with manufacturing interests in Plymouth. There are two others among those who have passed away, whom I ought to notice, Oliver Edes and Nathaniel Wood. Mr. Edes was the son of Oliver and Lucy (Lewis) Edes, and was born in East Needham, November 10, 1815. At the age of sixteen he began to learn the trade of nail making at works on the Boston mill dam owned by Horace Gray. He afterwards ran a tack machine in the works of Apollos Randall & Co., in South Braintree, and at the age of twenty-two invented a machine for cutting rivets from drawn wire. Before that time rivets had been made by hand, and it was difficult to make the trade believe that any but handmade rivets would meet the wants of mechanics. In 1840 he entered into a partnership with Andrew Holmes under the firm name of Holmes, Edes & Co., with a factory at North Marshfield. At the end of three years the firm was dissolved and a new one formed between Mr. Edes and Jeremiah Farris, under the firm name of Edes & Co. At the expiration of a year, in 1844, the firm moved their business to Plymouth. In 1850 Mr. Edes, having disposed of his interest, formed with Nathaniel Wood the firm of Edes & Wood, and began the manufacture of zinc shoe nails and tacks, and soon after the rolling of zinc plates at Chiltonville. In 1859 he bought out Mr. Wood, and in 1880, with his son Edwin L. Edes, the partnership of Oliver Edes and son was formed. In 1883, a partnership was formed consisting of Oliver Edes, Jason W. Mixter, Edwin L. Edes and T. E. Heald of Knoxville for the development of zinc mines in Virginia and Tennessee, and for the manufacture of zinc metal. He married October 7, 1836, Susan, daughter of Ebenezer and Lydia (Curtis) Davie, and had William Wallace, 1847, who married Ellen M., daughter of Calvin H. Eaton, Lydia Curtis 1851, who married Jason W. Mixter, and Edwin L., 1853., who married Mary E., daughter of Edgar C. Raymond. Mr. Edes died February 21, 1884.

Nathaniel Wood of Dedham married Rhoda Colburn, and came to Plymouth in the early part of the last century, and had six children, after 1810, among whom was Nathaniel, who was born November 25, 1814. The son, Nathaniel, learned the nail cutter’s trade at the works on the Mill dam in Boston, owned by Horace Gray, father of the late Horace Gray, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. He worked for some years in the nail factory of N. Russell & Co., and for a time on his own account in cutting zinc nails and tacks, and in 1850 formed a partnership with Oliver Edes, under the firm name of Edes & Wood, in a factory which stood on Forge pond brook in Chiltonville, where the business was carried on of making zinc shoe nails and tacks and rolling zinc plates. In 1859 he sold out his interest to Mr. Edes, and with Charles O. Churchill, under the firm name of N. Wood & Co., continued the business in a factory farther down the stream on the road leading from the Sandwich road to the old Manomet road at what was called the Double Brook dam. At a later time he ran a small factory on Little Brook. He married in 1837 Angeline, daughter of Lewis and Betsey (Weston) Finney, and had Warren Colburn, 1840, and Florence A., 1847. He married second, 1854, Betsey R., daughter of Charles and Abigail (Russell) Churchill, and had Nathaniel Russell, 1856, and died April 26, 1888.

Allen Crocker Spooner, whom I knew intimately, was a brilliant man, who was cut off by death at the threshold of an especially promising career. He was the son of Capt. Nathaniel and Lucy (Willard) Spooner, and was born March 9, 1814, in the house on the southerly side of High street, next west of the house on the corner of Spring street. He graduated at Harvard in 1835, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar, September 3, 1839. He belonged to a coterie of scholarly and jovial men, who met at the eating house of General Bates once a week, and over their bitter ale were legitimate successors of the Fleet street club of Johnson and Garrick and Goldsmith. The members of this coterie were Fay Barrett of Concord, James Russell Lowell of Cambridge, George W. Minns, Nathan Hale, Allen Crocker Spooner and John C. King of Boston and Benjamin Drew of Plymouth. All of these were Harvard men except King, who was a sculptor, and Benjamin Drew, a journalist, connected with the Boston Post. Their jokes on each other, though sometimes rough, were always taken in good part. One evening Minns and Spooner were walking into town from Cambridge and feeling a little dry in the throat, Spooner said: “Minns, have you got any money about your clothes, for I spent my last cent in paying toll?” “I’ve got just twelve and a half cents,” said Minns, a sum which was the silver nine pence of that period. Peter B. Brigham kept a drinking saloon in the old concert hall building on the corner of Hanover and Court streets, and his drinks were of two prices, those like Deacon Grant and Dr. Pierpont, named after distinguished temperance men, were nine pence, and all other common drinks were six and a quarter cents or four pence half penny. They marched into Brigham’s as if they were rolling in riches, and as they came to the counter, Minns said, “Spooner what are you going to have.” Spooner answered, “I think I will have a Deacon Grant, what are you going to have?” “Well, I don’t feel very dry, I guess I won’t take anything.” Mr. Spooner was sought as a guest on many public occasions, where he was sure to entertain his audience by either a graceful speech, a bit of humor, or an appropriate poem. I remember that on one occasion he was invited to join the Boston underwriters in their annual excursion down Boston harbor. A little while before, Capt. Jas. Murdock, commanding the packet ship Ocean Monarch, had run his ship ashore at Cohasset or Scituate in a fog, though fortunate enough to get her off. At the lunch of the party on board the excursion steamer, Mr. Spooner assumed the position of toastmaster, and calling up the guests one after another, answered the toasts himself, adopting the personality of each. Among others he toasted Capt. Murdock, who was present, and kept the company in a roar by claiming a discovery in the science of navigation by which he had found that the use of the lead was an obsolete practice, only persisted in by those who had not yet learned that ships were constructed to navigate the ocean and not the land. Capt. Murdock, I believe, was a cabin window Captain, a fine looking man, jolly good fellow, popular with his passengers, but not a sailor in the truest sense of the word. Afterwards in coming down the English channel, his ship was destroyed by fire off Holy head, and a passenger whom I knew by the name of Southworth, told me that Murdock was the first of the ship’s company to reach Liverpool with news of the disaster.

About the year 1845 Mr. Spooner went to England, a passenger in the packet ship Devonshire, Capt. Luce, the same Captain Luce who commanded the Collin’s steamship Arctic, which was run into by the Brig Vesta, near Cape Race, Sept. 24, 1854, and sunk with the loss of three hundred and fifty lives. Capt. Luce, whom I afterwards met, told me that when the ship went down he stood on the paddle box holding his little boy by the hand and that he thought he would never stop going down. He had no sooner reached the surface, still holding his little boy by the hand, than a spar loosened from the wreck, came up with great force, and striking his son, killed him instantly. He succeeded in reaching a fragment of the wreck, and was picked up by one of the brig’s boats.

On his return home, Mr. Spooner told the Boston Old Colony Club, of which I was a member, that in running into the harbor of old Plymouth as he lay on deck basking in the sun, he saw a vessel coming out, which he pictured in his mind as the Mayflower starting on her voyage to the new world. His surprise was great when, as the vessel passed, he read on her stern the name of the Pilgrim ship the Mayflower. My wonder at the time whether his eyesight was not blurred by an exuberant imagination was modified at a later time by an incident within my own experience. On the 19th of August, 1895, in crossing the English channel from Queensboro to Flushing in Holland, I saw coming from a northern port a small steamer crossing our course diagonally, almost exactly the course which the Speedwell steered in August, 1620, in running from Delfthaven to Southampton, where she joined the Mayflower. As she passed our stern I was a little startled as I read the name Speedwell on her bow. I was talking at the time with two passengers, and calling their attention to the name of the vessel, I told them the Pilgrim story. Lest I might be suspected like my friend Spooner of an exuberant imagination, I examined the British marine register, after my return home, and found one of the three Speedwells whose size agreed with the vessel I saw. She belonged in Ipswich, and I wrote to the owner asking him to advise me of the whereabouts of his steamer on the 19th of August, 1895. Unable to find in Boston a Victoria stamp, I was obliged to send my letter without a return stamp enclosed, and I attribute to that circumstance my failure to receive a reply. The incident was especially interesting, as I had just visited Scrooby for the purpose of placing a bronze tablet on the site of Scrooby Manor, in which the Pilgrim church was formed, and was on my way to Leyden, the Pilgrims’ home in Holland.

I shall at this point in my narrative devote some space to notices of such Plymoutheans as have distinguished themselves in other localities without regard to the houses with which by birth or otherwise they may have been associated. To these will be added notices of a few who were residents of Plymouth, but who have been in preceding chapters only incidentally alluded to.

William G. Russell was the son of Thomas and Mary Ann (Goodwin) Russell, and was born in Plymouth, November 18, 1821. After attending the public schools he was fitted for college by Hon. John A. Shaw of Bridgewater, and graduated at Harvard in 1840. After teaching in a private school in Plymouth a short time, and in the Dracut Academy a year, he studied law in the office of his brother-in-law, Wm. Whiting, and at the Harvard Law School, receiving from the latter the degree of LL. B. in 1845, and being admitted to the Suffolk bar July 25, 1848. He was at once associated with Mr. Whiting as a partner, and while the latter was holding the position of solicitor of the War Department from 1862 to 1865, the business of the firm devolved on him. After the death of Mr. Whiting in 1873, George Putnam joined him as a partner, and at a later period, Jabez Fox was added to the firm. After the death of Sydney Bartlett he was universally recognized as the leader of the Suffolk bar, and was offered a seat on the bench of the Supreme Judicial Court, both as associate and chief justice. He was a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and at various times held the positions of President of the Union Club, the social library association, and the Suffolk bar association; vice president of the Pilgrim Society, director of the Mount Vernon National Bank, and the Massachusetts Hospital Life Insurance Co., and Harvard overseer from 1869 to 1881, and from 1882 to 1894. He married October 6, 1847, Mary Ellen, daughter of Thomas and Lydia Coffin Hedge of Plymouth, and died in Boston, February 6, 1896.

Thomas Russell, brother of the above, was born in Plymouth, September 26, 1825, and graduated at Harvard in 1845. He studied law with Whiting & Russell in Boston, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar November 12, 1849. He was appointed Justice of the Police Court of Boston, February 26, 1852, and in 1859 on the establishment of the Superior Court was appointed one of its associate justices. While he was on the bench a number of cases of garrotting and robbery occurred on Boston Commons, which for a time made the Common dangerous to cross in the evening. The first person charged with the offence was tried before Judge Russell, and convicted, and the severe sentence imposed by him put an end to the commission of the crime. In 1867 he resigned his seat on the Superior bench, and on the accession of General Grant to the Presidency, was appointed collector of the port of Boston. During General Grant’s second term he resigned the collectorship, and was appointed minister to the Republic of Venezuela, where he remained several years. He was a Harvard overseer from 1855 to 1867; a Trustee of the State Nautical School several years, and in 1879 was chosen President of the Pilgrim Society, holding that position until his death. The judge was an ardent republican, and being a ready speaker, was always in demand on the political stump. He was occasionally selected for the delivery of formal orations, the most notable of which occurring to me were a fourth of July oration before the Boston City Government, and a eulogy on General Grant delivered in Plymouth. He married in 1853 Mary Ellen, daughter of Rev. Edward T. Taylor of Boston, and died in Boston, February 9, 1887.