By temperance governed, and by reason taught,
The paths of peace and pleasantness he sought;
With competence and length of days was blest,
And cheered with hopes of everlasting rest.
He married in 1797 Sophia, daughter of Sylvanus and Martha (Wait) Bartlett. His son, Benjamin, of whom I especially speak in this notice, was born in Plymouth, November 28, 1812. He was educated at the public schools, leaving the high school about four years before I entered it. After leaving school he entered the office of the Old Colony Memorial to learn the printer’s trade, and there laid the foundation of his reputation as an expert in typography. About the year 1835 he began his career as teacher, and during a period of twenty-five years taught in the Phillips, Otis, Mayhew and Glover schools in Boston. While living in Boston his companionship was prized by scholarly men, and he was one of a group of social fellows already referred to who met at a saloon in Cornhill square, called the Shades, kept by General Bates, a Scotchman. There the group would frequently meet in Bohemian fashion to exchange witticisms and criticisms and enjoy a mug of ale. These occasional opportunities to give vent to his sense of humor were not sufficient to exhaust his flow of wit and under the cognomen of Ensign Stebbins he often wrote for the “carpet bag,” and was always a welcome contributor to the humorous columns of the Boston Post, I remember reading a squib of his in the Post sixty years ago, representing a showman explaining and describing to his audience the various features of his exhibition, as for instance:
“This, ladies and gentlemen, is the zebra, it measures ten feet from head to tail, and eleven feet from tail to head, has twelve stripes along its back and nary one alike.”
“This is the hippopotamus, an amphibious animal, what dies in the water and can’t live on the land.”
“This, ladies and gentlemen, is the shoved over of the scalper’s art, the statute of Apollos spoken of in the acts of the Apostles, where it says that Paul doth plant and Apollos water, and to illustrate the text more fully I have appended to his left hand a large, tin watering pot, which I bought of a tin peddler for thirty-seven and a half cents.”
About 1860 Mr. Drew went to St. Paul, where he taught school a year, and then for some years he performed the duties of proof reader in the Government printing office in Washington. In 1881 he made a journey around the world, spending a short time on the way with his son Edward Bangs Drew, a Mandarin in the Chinese Imperial Customs Service, with headquarters at Tientsin, where he passed his 70th birthday. On his return he settled permanently in his native town, recalling the scenes and friends of earlier days, and roaming among the haunts of the fathers of the town. He published during his life a book entitled “Pens and Types,” a standard work on typography, and another entitled, “The North side of slavery,” and after his final return to Plymouth he published a valuable descriptive catalogue of the gravestones and inscriptions on Plymouth Burial Hill. He married Caroline Bangs of Brewster, and died in Plymouth July 19, 1903, at the age of ninety years, seven months and twenty-one days.
Zabdiel Sampson, son of George and Hannah (Cooper) Sampson, was born in Plympton in 1781, and graduated at Brown University in 1803. He studied law with Joshua Thomas, and settled in Plymouth. In 1816 he was chosen member of Congress, and in 1820 was appointed collector of the port of Plymouth to succeed Henry Warren. At that time political lines were in a comparatively subdued and inactive state. The loose constructionist or federal party was still in existence, but declining in strength and power. Monroe, a strict constructionist or Democratic Republican, was re-elected with practical unanimity, while the campaign of 1824 was rather a personal contest between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, than a party struggle. During the administration of Adams the name National Republican took the place of Federalist, and the Democratic Republican party assumed the name of Democrat. Thus parties remained until the campaign of 1832, when the National Republicans assumed the name of Whigs. Thus the two great parties continued until 1856, when the Republican party was born. There were splinters from these parties at various times, such as the anti-masonic party in 1830, the liberty party in 1839, the free soil party in 1848 and the American party in 1852, as there are now splinters from the Democratic and Republican parties like the temperance and labor parties.