Plymouth memories of an octogenarian

by William T. Davis

In 1827 the Tremont theatre was built and opened on the 24th of September. In 1842 it was sold to the Baptist Society, of which Rev. Dr. Colver was pastor. In 1831 a building on Traverse street, known as the American amphitheatre was built by W. and T. L. Stewart, which was opened in July as the Warren Theatre, but replaced in 1836 by the National Theatre, which was burned in April, 1852. It was again rebuilt, and finally destroyed March 24, 1863. In January, 1836, the Lion Theatre was opened on Washington street, on the site of the present Keith’s Theatre, and later as the Melodeon, was the scene of performances by Macready, Charlotte Cushman and others. In 1841 the Eagle Theatre was built on the corner of Haverhill and Traverse streets, but was soon abandoned. In 1841 the Boston Museum was established on the corner of Tremont and Bromfield streets, and in 1846 was removed to the site which it recently occupied north of King’s Chapel Burial ground. During the Millerite excitement in 1843, the Miller Tabernacle was built on Howard street, and converted into the theatre called the Howard Athenæum, in 1845. It was opened October 13 in that year, and was burned in February, 1846, in which year the present Howard Anthenæum was built. In 1848 the Beach Street Museum was erected, but had a short life. The present Boston Theatre was built in 1854, and at that time was exceeded in capacity by only six theatres in the world. To return to the Federal street theatre, which I have said was abandoned for dramatic purposes in 1833, the building passed in 1834 into the possession of the Academy of Music, and was called the Odeon. In 1846 it was leased for a time again as a theatre, and was afterwards occasionally used for short seasons by Italian Opera companies, by the Central Church, and by the Lowell Institute, until it was taken down in 1852.

In connection with the theatres it will not be out of place to speak of Concert Hall, which once stood on the corner of Hanover and Court streets, built about 1750, and taken down a few years ago to widen the first mentioned street. Before and during and after the Revolution it was a famous place for concerts, balls and other entertainments. I have a card of invitation issued by the officers of the French fleet, then in Boston harbor, to a ball to be held there. It is printed on the back of a playing card, showing the straits to which Boston was reduced during the Revolution. In my boyhood I saw there an exhibition by Maelzel of his famous diorama of the “Conflagration of Moscow,” and of his “automaton chess player,” which beat Boston’s best players, but was finally discovered to have a small humped-backed dwarf concealed inside. There, also, I saw an exhibition of legerdemain by a colored man named Richard Potter, who also exhibited in Pilgrim Hall about 1831. He was born in Hopkinton, Mass., on the estate of Sir Harry Frankland, one of whose slaves named Dinah, and brought from Guinea, was his mother. After attending school he went to England with a Mr. Skinner of Roxbury, and there learned the magician’s art. In 1836 Concert Hall was taken by Peter B. Brigham, and occupied as a hostelry, where could be found the best oysters and the most famous drinks. He was notable for the concoction of new alcoholic mixtures, to which he gave such names as “Tip and Ty,” “I. O. U.,” “Paris White,” “Fiscal Agent,” “Free Soiler,” “Same Old Coon,” “Clay Smash,” “Webster eye-opener,” and “Deacon Grant.” He made a fortune, a large part of which was bequeathed for the erection of a hospital now building.

It may be asked how, before the introduction of railroads, the producers in remote sections of New England found a market. Every valley and hillside yielded bountiful crops, and every water privilege had its little mill, and of course the farmer and manufacturer depended for returns from their labor on the markets of the seaboard. The market gardeners of Waltham and Brighton and Cambridge found no difficulty in supplying daily the markets of Boston, and the brigs, schooners and sloops, plying as packets between Boston and the various ports along the shores of New England, brought to the metropolis the products of a considerable territory lying along the banks and head waters of the Penobscot, the Kennebec, Merrimac and Connecticut rivers. But the large district beyond the reach of these outlets was obliged to largely depend on teams and baggage wagons for transportation. While I was in college, from 1838 to 1842, there was a ceaseless procession of these teams passing through Cambridge from Vermont, New Hampshire and distant parts of northern Massachusetts. They brought butter, cheese, lard, eggs, poultry, potatoes, apples, cider, hams, pork, shoes, wooden ware, chairs, and other articles of the field and shop, and returned with supplies needed at home. Teamsters put up their teams at one of the numerous taverns in the immediate neighborhood of Boston and, discharging their freight in the city early the next morning, reloaded their wagons and returned to their putting up place, starting for home the next day. The taverns, which depended for support almost entirely on these teamsters, were the Norfolk House in Roxbury, the Cattle Fair Hotel in Brighton, the Punch-bowl in Brookline, Porter’s Tavern in North Cambridge, and others in Cambridgeport, Medford, Watertown, Waltham, East Cambridge and Charlestown. The best known of these were Porter’s and the Cattle Fair, and hardly a night did they fail to find numerous patrons who sat around a huge wood fire playing checkers or loosening their tongues with plentiful libations of mulled wine or flip. In the vicinity of Porter’s there was for some years a race course, which afforded to the students of Harvard frequent opportunities to violate the rules of the college. Both at Porter’s and the Cattle Fair house weekly cattle fairs were held, and cattle, horses and sheep and hogs, were sold to customers, who with fat wallets had come from many scores of towns to buy. These customers were market men and stable keepers from towns within a radius of at least fifty miles, and drove their purchases home over the roads and yarded them until ready for slaughter or sale. I have heard it said that no keener eye, or shrewder judgment of the value of a fat yoke of oxen than those of the late Amasa Holmes of Plymouth were to be found in the cattle yards of Cambridge and Brighton.

Having referred to the taverns in the vicinity of Boston, supported by the commerce on the road, and by the cattle fairs, I am led to speak of the hotel system in Boston, as I remember it seventy years ago, when the population was eighty thousand. At that time, omitting only very small taverns, I remember Doolittle’s Tavern in Cambridge street, the Pemberton House in Howard street, the Pavilion, the Albion and the Tremont House in Tremont street, the New England House in Clinton street, two taverns near Haymarket Square, the American and Webster Houses in Hanover street, Wilde’s Tavern in Elm street, the City Tavern in Brattle street, the Stackpole House on the corner of Milk and Devonshire streets, the Exchange Coffee House in Congress Square, the Pearl Street House on the upper corner of Milk and Pearl streets, the Commercial Coffee House on the lower corner of Milk and Battery March streets, the Bromfield House on the south side of Bromfield street, the Marlboro Hotel in Washington street, nearly opposite Franklin street, the Washington House on the east side of Washington street, a little south of Milk street, and the Lamb Tavern on or near the site of the present Boston Theatre. The United States Hotel which comes a little within the seventy years, was built by a company not far from 1840 on land bought of the South Cove Company. The South Cove Company owned flats bought of the city in 1833, extending from Essex street to the old Federal street bridge, measuring about seventy-three acres, and bounded on the west by Harrison avenue as far as Dover street bridge, including lands which for many years were the sites of the Boston and Albany and Old Colony Railroad stations. While workmen were excavating for the foundations of the United States Hotel, I remember seeing in the trench the timbers of an old wharf. Some of the houses I have mentioned have been historic. Paran Stevens, who kept the New England House, was engaged to keep the Revere House, when it was opened in 1844, and was the landlord later of the Tremont House, the Battle House in Mobile, and the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York, in the last of which he made an ample fortune. The Tremont House was opened by Dwight Boyden in 1829, and with the exception of Mr. Stevens, he alone made the house profitable. The United States Hotel was opened and kept some years by Albert Clark and Ralph W. Holman. Mr. Clark went from the United States to the Brevoort House in New York, and retired a millionaire. Up to the time during the Civil War, when the cost of living was advanced, the highest price per day for transients was two dollars, but on the claim that the cost of maintaining a boarder had doubled, the daily charge was doubled, and consequently the profits were also doubled. In 1845 I boarded at the United States Hotel, and paid for room and board five dollars a week, and during the winters of 1858 and 1859, while in the Senate, I boarded at the Tremont House and paid for board and room eight dollars per week. It is true that the comforts and conveniences in hotels have vastly improved. It is difficult to realize that at that time a visit to the lavatory involved in the winter an uncomfortable, if not dangerous exposure to the outer air. The sewage arrangements for hotels as for other houses, were entirely inadequate to the demands of the city, and the vaults were emptied by teams from Brighton, which were not permitted to enter the city until ten o’clock at night. In very many private yards there were pumps in close proximity to these vaults, and it is a wonder that the health of the city was not seriously impaired. The teams I have referred to were nightly strung along on Cambridge bridge, waiting for the hour, and were called by the college boys, “Brighton Artillery.” The sewage question was an unsolved one in Boston for many years, and the necessity of ventilating sewers was little realized or understood. When water closets and set bowls were introduced, it was supposed that traps with standing water would prevent the passage of deleterious gas. It was, however, discovered at last, that while odors might thus be excluded, the dangerous gases, which were inodorous, could not be kept back by water. Thus two things became necessary, to wit, individual ventilators connected with bathroom plumbing, and a proper ventilation of public sewers. I remember that many years ago the city Government in response to complaints of water spouts which discharged their water on the sidewalks, passed an ordinance requiring all spouts to enter the sewers. The Board of Health at once protested against the adoption of such an arrangement on the ground that spouts would discharge sewer gases through the house gutters in the immediate vicinity of sleeping room windows; but it was soon discovered that such a general ventilation of the sewers prevented the formation of gases, and was a conservator of health.

CHAPTER XXXXIII.

I have suggested that some notice would be taken by me of the changes which have taken place in seventy years in the marine aspects of Boston. To a nautical eye these changes have been great. Seventy years ago the wharves from India wharf to what is now the Gas House wharf, were occupied by full rigged ships, square rigged brigs, topsail schooners and sloops, engaged in traffic with the northwest coast, Valparaiso, China, Calcutta, the Mediterranean, England, the Western Islands, Nova Scotia, the Penobscot and Kennebec rivers, Portland, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, the James river, Wilmington, Savannah, Charleston, New Orleans, and every New England port. There were the ships Akbah, Atlas, South America, St. Petersburg, Asia, Daniel Webster, and the brigs, Emerald, Ruby, Topaz and Amethyst in the European trade; the ships of Bryant and Sturgis in the northwest coast trade; of Elisha Atkins in the South American trade; John H. Pearson in the New Orleans trade; Daniel C. Bacon in the Calcutta trade, and shippers without number engaged in trade with many American ports. Besides these there were steamers running to Bangor, Bath and Portland, and during the summer to Plymouth, Barnstable, Hingham and Provincetown. The whole wharf front of Boston was not more than a mile long, but ship’s royal masts and yards exhibited a tangle of spars in strong contrast with the scene today, South Boston at that time displayed an expanse of flats now covered with docks of the greatest capacity. East Boston was without wharves, and Charlestown outside of the Navy Yard, added little to the commercial aspect of the harbor. When the Cunard steamers began to arrive in 1840, there was not a towboat in the harbor, and when the steamer Brittannia of the Cunard line was getting ready on her return trip to Liverpool, set down for February 3, 1844, the harbor was closed solid with ice, which it was feared would prevent her departure. But the Boston merchants realizing the importance of holding Boston as the sailing port of the Cunard company, made a contract with Gage & Hittinger, a firm largely engaged in cutting ice and shipping it to ports in warm latitudes, to cut a passage to the sea one hundred feet wide, and seven miles long, through ice nearly two feet thick. This was done, and the steamer sailed on schedule time, much to the pleasure and profit of the Cunard Company, and to the credit of the city. At about that time the tug boat R. B. Forbes was built by the underwriters, and was for some years in their service. One of her first opportunities to render aid was I think, in 1848, when the steamer Cambria, inward bound from Liverpool, went ashore back of Truro. One Sunday morning, on my way to church, I met Mr. George Baty Blake driving into town, who told me that the Cambria, in which he was a passenger, was ashore, and that he was on his way to Boston to obtain aid in hauling her off. I went with him to see the station master, Henry Carter, and Joseph Sampson, conductor, and in an hour he was on a locomotive bound to Boston. So expeditiously was Mr. Blake’s service rendered, that before daylight the next morning the Cambria had been hauled off by the R. B. Forbes, and was on her way to Boston. Mr. Blake had been a frequent Cunard passenger, and told the captain that if he would put him ashore he would send the R. B. Forbes down.

How things have changed. A ship is now rarely seen, brigs have disappeared altogether, topsail schooners from Nova Scotia occasionally visit Boston, and the old packet sloops have lost the rosewood and bird’s eye maple of their cabins, and been degraded to uses of which they seem to be ashamed. Now and then I read on the stern of a weather beaten coal barge the name of a ship I knew in her prime, which seems to me like a wing clipped eagle no longer able to soar, or a disembodied spirit suffering for sins done in the body. In view of the changes it is thoughtlessly said that the commerce of Boston has declined, but there can be no greater mistake. It must be remembered that the tonnage of vessels has largely increased. The seven masted schooner Thomas W. Lawson alone, with a carrying capacity of six thousand tons of coal, making ten trips a year, represents the arrival of one hundred ships of the carrying capacity of the largest tonnage seventy years ago, while leaving out of the calculation tramp steamers, the regular liners with cargoes of two thousand tons each, represent three hundred more. Coming down to actual statistics, the customs receipts at Boston have increased from 1901 to 1905, inclusive, two millions of dollars, and the entering tonnage during the same time, has increased 456,392. The complaint of a sluggish condition of our commerce is based on the fact that our foreign trade is largely in the hands of aliens. Some seek a remedy in subsidy to American ships, but the question may be asked whether it will not be well, before taking a subsidy out of the treasury, a large portion of which will find its way into the pockets of the steel barons of Pennsylvania, to try the simpler remedy of taking the duty from coal and iron, and compelling manufacturers to sell at home structural steel used in building ships at prices as low as they sell to foreign ship builders.

Turning now to railroads, whose entire history is covered by the period of my life, I suppose I may say without the possibility of a denial, that no invention or discovery has within seventy years been more effective in developing the resources of our country, maintaining its integrity, and promoting its interests than the railroad system. The use of coal has been too great to be accurately measured, but without railroads that product of the mines would be still sleeping in its beds. The telegraph and telephone afford business facilities, which are thought indispensable, but they are only the inevitable followers of the railroad, and even depend on its lines for the stretching of their wires. Without gas or kerosene oil, and with wood for fuel, we could have still enjoyed life, though it be without present conveniences, comforts and luxury. Without railroads it is not too much to say that it would have been impossible to dispose of, and assimilate that vast immigration which during the last seventy years has sought a resting place in our land. It may also be said that the railroad system, which broke through the wall that separated the old Union from California, prevented the establishment of a new and distinct empire on the Pacific coast. Without attempting even a sketch of the history of the railroad system, it is sufficient to say that at its introduction the road bed, motive power and cars were rude and primitive. The locomotives weighed not far from eight tons; the cars running on a single truck were built after the fashion of stage coaches with doors on the sides, and the rails weighed fifty pounds per yard. When Gridley Bryant of Boston invented the double truck, I was told by his son, the late Gridley J. F. Bryant, that he was laughed out of the room of a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature when he suggested that long cars with two double trucks could safely run on a curved track. The committee had not learned the lesson, which the distinguished scientist, Professor Dionysius Lardner, learned at a later period, that it is never safe to deny the possibility of anything. In 1838 he declared that ocean steam navigation was impossible on account of the inability of any vessel to carry sufficient coal for a trans-Atlantic voyage, and yet before the year passed, in which the declaration was made, the steamship Sirius of seven hundred tons and two hundred and fifty horse power arrived in New York April 23d in nineteen days from Cork; and on the same day the steamship Great Western of thirteen hundred and forty tons and four hundred and fifty horse power, arrived in fifteen days from Bristol. I feel pretty sure when I deny that two and two make six, but if anyone should offer to bet with me that within five years it will be demonstrated that the earth stands still, I should be afraid to accept the offer. In June, 1827, when the construction of a road from Boston to Albany was first agitated, Jos. Tinker Buckingham, the learned editor of the Boston Courier, wrote an editorial for his columns, which contained the following paragraph:

“Alcibiades, or some other great man of antiquity, it is said, cut off his dog’s tail, that quid nuncs might not become extinct for want of excitement. Some such motive, we doubt not, moved one or two of our natural and experimental philosophers to get up the project of a railroad from Boston to Albany; a project which every one knows, who knows the simplest rules in arithmetic to be impracticable but at an expense a little less than the market value of the whole territory of Massachusetts, and which if practicable, every person of common sense knows would be as useless as a railroad from Boston to the moon. Indeed a road of some kind from here to the heart of that beautiful satellite of our dusky planet would be of some practical utility, especially if a few of our national, public spirited men, our railway fanatics, could be persuaded to pay a visit to their proper country.”

As is well known, the first railroad built in New England was a short road extending from the Quincy granite quarries to Neponset River, which was opened Oct. 7, 1826, to be used with horsepower for the transportation of granite to tide water. In June, 1830, the Boston and Lowell railroad was incorporated, and in 1831 the Boston and Providence, and the Boston and Worcester. I have heard it said that the curves on the easterly end of the Boston and Worcester were due to the expectation that horse power would be used, and to the consequent desirability of as level a track as possible. Though when the construction of some of the Massachusetts roads was begun it was planned to run them by horse power, the plan was changed before the roads were completed. On the Baltimore and Ohio road, which was begun in 1828, horses were used for some time, and the station between Baltimore and Washington, called the Relay House, took its name from the fact that relays of horses were taken there. In 1830 there were only forty-eight miles of railroad in the United States.