Plymouth memories of an octogenarian

by William T. Davis

CHAPTER XXXXI.

In speaking of the changes, in habits and customs, which have occurred in my day, it will be difficult to draw the line between those, which only my older readers will remember, and those more recent ones, which will be recalled by the young. In noting these changes I shall not confine myself to Plymouth, but shall as far as possible include those which have elsewhere come under my observation. The population of Plymouth in 1820, two years before my birth, was 4,384. Its growth to 11,017, in 1905, is one of the least remarkable changes in the history of the town during that period. Turning, however, to the nationality of the population, we find a change which has kept pace with the growing facilities of international communication, and the restless tide of migration, which characterized the 19th century. This change in nationality began to show itself about the time of my birth. Up to that time the population was not only practically wholly American, but also largely of Plymouth nativity. There are records showing that in 1813 there were two Irishmen, John Burke and Michael Murphy, living in Plymouth, and there are reasons for believing that they and their families were the only persons of Irish birth in the town. It is possible that the above two men were servants, or employees of Judge Joshua Thomas, who lived in the house on Main street, now called the Plymouth Tavern. At any rate, Judge Thomas must have felt a special interest in them, as in the year above mentioned, 1813, Bishop Cheverus, by his invitation, came down from Boston and celebrated mass for their benefit in the parlors on the southerly side of his house. It is undoubtedly true that Bishop Cheverus was the most distinguished Divine who ever visited Plymouth. He was born in Mayenne, France, Jan. 28, 1768, and came to Boston in 1796, where he became associated with the Catholic mission. In 1803 he raised by subscription money to build the Catholic church in Franklin street, the site of which is now occupied by Devonshire street, and more than $3,000 of the sum raised was subscribed by Protestants, of whom John Adams headed the list. The esteem in which he was held in Boston was further shown by the gratuitous services of Charles Bulfinch, the distinguished architect, who furnished the design for the church, and by the gift of a picture of the crucifixion by Henry Sargent, a Boston artist, to place on its walls. Among the subscribers to the church fund were Harrison Gray Otis, Benjamin Crowinshield, Theodore Lyman, Thomas H. Perkins and Samuel Dexter, and General E. Hasket Derby gave the church a bell. While in Boston Bishop Cheverus accepted invitations to preach in Protestant churches, following as he said, the example of Christ, who preached in the synagogues. In 1810 he was consecrated in Baltimore the first Bishop of Boston, and in 1818 his associate, the Abbé Mantignon, died, at whose funeral the body was borne to the grave through the streets of Boston with the Bishop wearing ecclesiastical garments, and a mitre, presenting a novel scene to the eyes of New England people. In 1823, the Bishop was called to France to take charge of the Bishopric of Montauban, and in 1826 was nominated to the Metropolitan See of Bordeaux. In 1828 he was made councillor of state, and in 1830 commander of the order of the Holy Ghost. In February, 1836, he was made a Cardinal, and on the 9th of March received from Louis Philippe the Cardinal’s hat. He died July 2d, 1836.

Until ocean steamers were built of sufficient size to accommodate steerage passengers, immigration was chiefly confined to the Irish, who came in the packet ships plying between London or Liverpool and New York, Philadelphia, or Boston. There were the Cambridge, Devonshire, London, Henry Clay, Yorkshire, Liverpool, Ashburton and Hottingeur, coming to New York; the Daniel Webster, North America, Anglo Saxon and Ocean Monarch coming to Boston, and the Tuscarora and Shenandoah to Philadelphia, and for some years their steerages were crowded with Irish immigrants. With the coming in of the steamers the numbers largely increased. It was during the period from 1835 to 1855, that the Irish element began to be perceptible to any considerable extent in Plymouth. Within my day the first Irishman to come to the town was John Cassidy, about 1820 or 1830. He had been living for a time in Boston, and there his son, John S., our townsman, was born. He was a blacksmith by trade, and a man of striking appearance. He had two daughters, whom I knew very well, fine women; Elizabeth, who married Gridley T. Poole, and Ellen, who married a Mr. Southmayd of Campton, New Hampshire. There was a Michael McCarthy who came not long after Mr. Cassidy, whose daughter was the mother of our late townsman, Timothy Downey. Quite a number came both before and soon after 1850, including Timothy and John Quinlan in 1849, John O’Brien in 1851, and not far from those dates Jeremiah Murray, John Murray, Timothy Regan, Wm. O’Brien, Timothy Lynch, James Ready, Timothy Hurley, James Lynch, James Burns, Barney Sullivan and others. For many years the number of Catholics in Plymouth was insufficient to maintain a church, and father Moran of Sandwich, where the glass works had gathered a considerable Irish population, was in the habit of holding service once or twice in each month in the town hall and Davis Hall, and elsewhere, until the Catholic church was erected in 1874.

After the advent of the Irish there was for some years quite a large German immigration, which found occupation in the Cordage works at Seaside. The German population, however, was rather a changeable one, and after a few years of savings, it largely found its way west, and was followed in Plymouth by the Italians, French and Portuguese, who, added to the Irish, now make up nearly one quarter of the population of the town. The Portuguese have drifted here chiefly from New Bedford and Provincetown, to which places they found their way in vessels bringing the first catch of oil landed at the Western Islands by whale ships from those ports. The effect of this immigration on Provincetown has been remarkable. The first time I ever went to that town was in 1836, when I was permitted as a boy of fourteen to join a party of older persons in the sloop Thetis, going one day and returning the next. At that time its population was about two thousand, nearly all of whom were Cape Cod people, who had moved there to either engage in the whale or cod fishery, or to keep stores for the sale of ship chandlery and supplies of all kinds to vessels making harbor there. A man by the name of Lothrop from some up Cape town, kept a hotel, and by the aid of loam brought from distant towns, he was cultivating the only garden in town. The only street was parallel with the shore, and from fence to fence it was a bed of loose sand, through the middle of which everybody waded, the women I have heard it said, having a way of kicking their heels in walking by which they kept the sand out of their shoes. One of our party asked the landlord if he could have a horse and ride through the village. “My dear sir,” said Mr. Lothrop, “there is not a horse owned in town, but the mail chaise will arrive about six o’clock, and perhaps the driver will let you have his horse.” During the administration of Andrew Jackson not only was our National debt extinguished, but a very considerable surplus revenue grew up, which in 1836 was divided among the states in the form of a loan, each state giving its obligation to repay the loan if ever called for. Massachusetts distributed its share among the towns, and Provincetown spent her portion in building plank sidewalks. At the present time the Portuguese constitute a majority of the population of the town. At the beginning of the civil war one of the measures proposed for the relief of the financial straits of the government was a call on the states for the payment of the loan above mentioned. It has been stated by Mr. L. E. Chittenden, Register of the Treasury under President Lincoln, that it was found at that time that the obligations of the Rebel states had mysteriously disappeared.

One of the important results of the foreign immigration in Plymouth County, and probably elsewhere has been the solution of the problem concerning the future of our abandoned farms. These foreigners, more especially the Portuguese and Italians, have picked them up one after another, and are prospering, where their former native owners failed. It must not be forgotten, while considering changes in population and occupation, that the abandonment of the fisheries has caused a great change in the industries of our town. With seventy-three vessels engaged in the Grand Bank fishery, as there were thirty-five years ago, our wharves and flake yards presented busy scenes. The large increase, however, of our coal and lumber trade, amounting now in the former, to thirty thousand tons annually, has helped materially to prevent any recent depreciation of wharf property.

I propose now to speak of the changes which have occurred within my recollection in carriages and in general methods of travel. I have in an early chapter referred to buggies and wagons, giving the derivation of their names, and the countries where they were originally used. The introduction of the carry-all in Plymouth occurred within my time, and as far back as I can remember there were only two, one in the stable of George Drew in Middle street, and the other owned by Bourne Spooner. It is generally supposed that its spacious interior gave rise to its name which, however, is really only a corruption of the name of the French Carriole. A vehicle called a cab, which is simply an abbreviation of cabriolet came quite extensively into use in Boston about 1840, but never reached Plymouth, and in the city has now largely given way to a four wheeler, which retains the old name. The carriage known as a hack, brought to America from London, and receiving the name which there applied to the horse alone, was never introduced into Plymouth until 1870. At the celebration of the dedication of the Soldiers’ Monument on Training Green in 1869, the committee of arrangements borrowed one from Geo. W. Wright of Duxbury, and hired another in Boston. There is probably no city in the world in which the hack has been for more than a hundred years in such general use as in Boston. The superior quality for which Boston hacks have long been distinguished, has been probably due to the fact that wealthy families have patronized hack stables rather than keep carriages of their own, and they wanted the best. I can well remember when there were not more than four private carriages and coachmen in Boston, and when nothing in livery was seen on its streets. About 1850 Mr. Deacon, who built an elegant mansion at the south end after the style of a French Chateau, surrounded by a high brick wall, set up a livery, and when his flunkey first appeared sitting like Solomon in all his glory on the box, he was followed and hooted at by the boys. The vehicle for many years in general use was in Boston, as elsewhere, the chaise. Lawyers and doctors and merchants constantly used them, and always drove themselves, while before the days of street cars business men drove every morning into the city from suburban homes, and put up their horses for the day in some central stable. I remember stables in Cambridge street, Bowdoin Square, Howard street, Elm street, Brattle street, Devonshire street, Franklin street, Federal street, School street, Bromfield street, Bedford street, West street and Charles street. With the introduction of street cars leading to neighboring towns, the livery business gradually disappeared, and the high price of central city lots has left the older sections of the city with scarcely a place where a horse can be put up for a night. These stables first found a new resting place in the extension of Chestnut street on the river side of Charles street, which Tom Appleton, the Boston wit, called Horse Chestnut street, but they have gradually extended to localities farther west. In the process of evolution the wheel has now turned, and the suburban business men are deserting the street cars, and, coming to Boston in their automobiles, instead of chaises, put them up for the day in the grand garage in Park Square. Again referring to the general use of chaises, I remember that such men as President Quincy, Lucius Manlius Sargent, Ebenezer Francis and Jeremiah Mason were frequently seen driving their chaises, and Mr. Webster often rode in one over the road from Marshfield to Boston, holding the reins himself, and having a trunk lashed to the axle. Mr. Mason, above mentioned, the distinguished lawyer, one day when riding in his chaise, turned from Washington street into Spring Lane, and met a truckman coming up with his team. He was six feet six inches in height, but he always sat in his chaise so bent as not to appear to be a tall man. The truckman called out to him to back out, which Mr. Mason was not inclined to do, as he would have to back up hill, while the truckman could more easily back down. Mr. Mason said nothing, but the truckman finally began to swear at him, and showed a disposition to fight. Mr. Mason becoming a little angry, began to straighten up and show his size, much to the astonishment of the man with the team, who called out, “for God’s sake, Mr., don’t uncoil any more, I’ll get out of the way.”

The stage derived its name, which it took from the stage coach of England, from the word stage, meaning a section or the whole of a road route. The name, however, reached New England many years before the arrival of the English coach, and was applied to a carriage of very different construction. The New England stage in the early part of the last century was a long covered wagon hung on leather thorough-braces, and contained seats without backs, which were reached by climbing over the seats in front. In 1801, according to the Farmer’s Almanac, there were twenty-five lines of coaches running out of Boston, most of which started from the King’s Inn on the corner of Exchange street and Market Square. The stages running to Cambridge and Roxbury and Brookline, made each two trips a day, and the stage to Plymouth made three trips a week by the way of Hingham, being ten hours on the road. The South Boston and Dorchester turnpike running as far as Neponset River, was incorporated, March 4, 1805, and the Braintree and Weymouth turnpike running from Quincy to Queen Ann’s Corner in West Scituate, was incorporated March 4, 1803. Thus a new route was opened by the last named turnpike, over which the fast line ran every day, while the mail line ran every alternate day through Hingham. Until the Old Colony Railroad was opened these turnpikes were toll roads. After a few years the clumsy stage gave way to the well known English coach made with the addition of a middle seat with an adjustable back strap. With the exception of the English post carriage a sort of a barouche drawn by two horses, one of which was ridden by a uniformed postilion, I have never found a more comfortable and attractive traveling carriage. In 1846 I rode with the coachman on one of these coaches from Glasgow to Carlisle, ninety miles, in nine hours, with the four horses on the gallop, and never leaving the centre of the track. The red coated guard occupying a seat at the back of the coach, warned with his horn every team to clear the road, and when passing a post office he threw off a mail pouch and took another from a hooked rod, held up by the master of the post. On approaching a station for change of horses, the guard gave notice with his horn, and the coachman halting in the middle of the road, dropped his reins right and left, and four hostlers, two to unhitch, and two to hitch, would have a new team ready with a delay of not more than two minutes, the coachman leaving his seat but once in the nine hours. During the last years of these coaches the schedule time of a trip from London to Edinburgh, four hundred miles, was forty hours. The hansom, which for more than fifty years has been used in London, has found a difficult entrance into Boston, but is now gradually finding its way into use. The fares charged for them are much lower in London than in Boston. In 1895 I took one at the railway station and rode with a fellow passenger to Morley’s hotel at Trafalgar Square, nearly three miles, and paid two and six pence for the two, while in Boston the charge would have been from two to three dollars.

The introduction of omnibuses in Boston, first used in London, was very gradual. Having an aunt living in Cambridge, one of my excursions during my vacation visits in Boston was to her home, and thus I became early familiar with the methods of communication with that town. As long ago as I can remember these omnibuses, taking the place of the old coaches, made only two or three trips a day, in answer to calls entered on a slate at the office in Brattle street, picking up passengers at their houses, and dropping them at their destinations. As business increased, passengers were obliged to take the omnibuses at the office, starting at every hour, and thus they became known as hourlies. Their business was partially interrupted for a time by the construction of a branch of the Fitchburg railroad, which had a station about where the law school is now located, but it was soon abandoned, and the track was taken up.

As I have begun to speak of matters connected with Boston, I may as well speak of the changes in that city since my early boyhood. For this digression I ask to be excused. I was almost as familiar with Boston, when a boy, as I was with Plymouth, as I spent nearly every vacation there with my grandmother who lived in Winthrop Place, which, with Otis Place, formed a circuitous avenue, entering from and returning to Summer street. Summer street during my early life was distinguished, not only for its beautiful shade trees and elegant houses, but also for its notable residents. Among the latter whom I remember were, Dr. Jacob Bigelow, Robert C. Winthrop, Dr. Putnam, Edward H. Robbins, Nathaniel Goddard, John Wells, Horace Gray, John P. Cushing, Benjamin Buzzey, Charles Tappan, Edward Everett, Rev. Dr. Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham, John C. Gray, Benjamin Rich, Rev. Dr. Alexander Young, Wm. Sturgis, Joseph Bell, Benjamin Loring, James W. Paige, and Daniel Webster. There also were Trinity church on the north side, and the Octagon church, Unitarian, at the junction of Summer and Bedford streets, while in Winthrop and Otis Place lived Rufus Choate, Abel Adams, Wm. Perkins, Samuel Whitwell, H. H. Hunnewell, George Bond, Henry Cabot, Joshua Blake, George Bancroft, Nathaniel Bowditch, and Israel Thorndike.

When that neighborhood was changed from a residential to a business one, Winthrop Place was extended across Franklin street to State street, the whole taking the name of Devonshire street. From Franklin to Milk street the nucleus of the extended street was Theatre Alley, so-called, because in the alley was the stage entrance of the Federal Street Theatre. The Catholic church, which stood on the south side of Franklin street, was taken down to make way for the extended street. Ma’am Dunlap’s famous cigar, snuff and tobacco store, which every gentleman in Boston knew, partly on account of the quality of her goods, and partly on account of the beauty of her daughter Rachel, stood on the west side of the alley. Boston has always been famous for its alleys, at least fifteen of which I remember. They furnished very convenient cut shorts for those who were in a hurry, or did not wish to encounter undesirable friends. Mr. Choate, whose office was on the southerly corner of Court and Washington streets, lived at different times at the United States hotel, in Edinboro street and Winthrop Place, and in going home he invariably went down State to Devonshire street, and thence through Theatre Alley and Catholic Church Alley. The Alley from State street to Dock Square, now called Change Alley, was formerly called Flagg Alley, taking its name from its pavement of flagstones, which again took their name from Elisha Flagg, who about 1750 opened a quarry in Grafton, and furnished Boston and some other New England towns with slabs of that description. For some unknown reason alleys seem to have been peculiar to seaport places like Provincetown, Salem, Marblehead, Newburyport and Plymouth, in the last of which were in my day, Thomas’s Alley, Cooper’s Alley, LeBaron’s Alley, Spooner’s Alley and Clamshell Alley, all of which remain except Thomas’s Alley on the south side of the estate of Col. Wm. P. Stoddard, which was closed some years ago, under an agreement with the town.