Plymouth memories of an octogenarian

by William T. Davis

Nathaniel Morton, in his New England’s Memorial, published in 1669, suggested that the Pilgrims adopted the name for the above reason, and also because “Plymouth in old England was the last town they left in their native country, and because they received many kindnesses from some Christians there.” It seems to me that Morton was unfortunate in the use of language. If he had said that the name given by Prince Charles was agreeable to the Pilgrims on account of its associations with their last port of departure, he would have undoubtedly spoken the truth, but it should not be stated that a name, already conferred on the landing place of the Pilgrims, was originated five years after its well known place on Smith’s map. That the Pilgrims knew of the name there can be no doubt. Capt. Thomas Dermer was at Plymouth in the summer of 1620, and wrote a letter to Gorges, dated, Plymouth, in July of that year, advising any colony of fifty or more to settle there. That letter must have reached Gorges before the Mayflower sailed from old Plymouth on the 6th of September, and of its contents the Pilgrims must have been made acquainted by Gorges, who was their adviser and friend. Besides, Edward Winslow wrote a letter to England from “Plymouth in New England,” dated December 11th, 1620, the very day of the Landing, a date too early for any formal action to have been taken by the Colony concerning a name for the locality; and further, Winslow uses the term, “New England,” a title which Smith alone had given to the Northern part or Virginia, and which probably appeared nowhere else than on his map.

The second question is—when was Plymouth incorporated. The direct answer to this question, that Plymouth was never incorporated, would be very unsatisfactory without some explanation of the relations existing between the Colony and the town of Plymouth. It is all very well to speak of the settlement of the town instead of its incorporation, and fix the date at 1620, but the precise time, when the line was drawn between the colony and town, and when the town was clothed by official authority with the functions of a municipality, it is impossible to fix. In the records of 1626 Plymouth is called a plantation; in a deed dated, 1631, from John to Edward Winslow, the town of Plymouth is referred to; in accordance with the law passed by the General Court requiring towns to choose constables, one was chosen in Plymouth in 1633; and in 1638 at a meeting held for the purpose of considering the disposition of the gift of stock by James Sherley of London for the benefit of the poor of the town, it was decided “that the town should be considered as extending from the lands of Wm. Pontus and John Dunham (now the lands of Thomas O. Jackson) on the south, to the outside of New street (now North street) on the north. Finally in the year 1637 the first entry in the town records was made, and on the second day of November, 1640, it was ordered at a meeting of the Court of Assistants that “whereas by the Act of the General Court held the third of March in the sixteenth year of his Majesties now reign, the Governor and Assistants were authorized to set the bounds of the several townships, it is enacted and concluded by the Court that the bounds of Plymouth township shall extend southwards to the bounds of Sandwich township, and northward to the little brook falling into Black Water from the commons left to Duxbury, and the neighborhood thereabouts, and westward eight miles up into the lands from any part of the bay or sea; always provided that the bounds shall extend so far up into the woodlands as to include the South Meadows toward Agawam, lately discovered, and the convenient uplands thereabouts.” But notwithstanding all these references, it is enough to say that Plymouth was settled in 1620, but never formally incorporated.

The third question is: What was the disease which carried off one-half of the Plymouth Colony during the first four months after the landing. In answer to this question only plausible conjectures can be made. Various theories have been suggested by medical men and others, but unfortunately insufficient data as to the symptoms and general characteristics of the epidemic have been handed down to us to enable any definite diagnosis to be made. Some have suggested smallpox, and some yellow fever, some cholera and some quick consumption. Some also have raised the question whether the germs of the disease, which swept off the Indians living in Plymouth four or five years before, still lurking in the soil or in vegetation, might not have retained sufficient vitality to develop in the human system. This last suggestion would afford little satisfaction, for the question would remain unsolved as to the nature of the disease. After much thought given to the matter, I have come to what I think is the most natural conclusion, that the disease was what was well known in the days of Irish immigration, before ocean steam navigation was available, as ship fever. Many readers will remember that packet ships and transient vessels were constantly arriving at New York and Boston, crowded with immigrants—after long passages from England, and that long confinement below deck resulted frequently in the breaking out of ship fever and caused serious mortality. The voyage of the Mayflower from Southampton to Cape Cod harbor was more than ninety days in length, and during that time imperfect ventilation and inadequate nourishment in a vessel of only one hundred and eighty tons, carrying within her walls one hundred and twenty crew and passengers, must have furnished all the conditions necessary for the presence of that terrible infection, which in our own day was so fatal to the immigrants from Ireland.

Let me further premise, in closing this introductory chapter, by saying that, of events occurring during a period of seventy-five years, of the changes in the external character of Plymouth, and of the manners and customs and ways of living of its people, I have a distinct recollection. Some of these, at a still earlier period, I can imperfectly recall. For instance in 1825, when I was a few months more than three years of age, my mother carried me on a visit to her father in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, and while I recall nothing of the voyage made in a fishing schooner on her way to the Grand Banks, the accuracy of my memory concerning many localities in Shelburne, was confirmed on a visit to that place twenty-six years later in 1851. My grandfather, Gideon White, a native of Plymouth, and a descendant from Peregrine White, was a loyalist during the revolution, and, holding a Captain’s commission in the British army, served with his regiment in Jamaica during the war. With other loyalists he settled in Shelburne, where, receiving the appointment of Provincial Judge, he afterwards lived, making occasional visits to England, but none to the United States, until his death in 1833. He married Deborah Whitworth, the daughter of Miles Whitworth, a British Army surgeon, and four of his children married in Boston and Plymouth and Cambridge, while a son graduated at Harvard in 1812.

I remember, too, that at the age of four, in 1826, I was carried to my first school. It was kept by Mrs. Martha Weston, who was known as Mrs. Patty, or more generally Ma’am Weston, the widow of Coomer Weston, and grandmother of our townsman, Myles S. Weston, in the house on North street, the third below that of Miss Dr. Pierce, not long since occupied by Wm. W. Brewster. I remember well the school room, its sanded floor and the cricket on which I sat. From that dear old lady, with a pleasant smile and kindly voice, I first tasted the “sweet food of kindly uttered knowledge.” She died July 27, 1841, and but few of her scholars can now be left to join with me in blessing her memory.

CHAPTER II.

Before proceeding to a general consideration of the streets and ways of Plymouth, and their changes, this is a fitting place to refer to an important alteration, in one of its chief highways, which, though occurring during my life time, is a little beyond the scope of my memory. In ancient times the route from Plymouth to Sandwich was through the district of “half way ponds,” which thus received its name. When a stage line between the two towns was established the route ran through Chiltonville, leaving Bramhall’s corner on the right, and passing over Eel River bridge, turned to the right and by a diagonal course reached a point on the present road near the estate of Mr. Jordan. At that time the road through Clark’s valley by the cotton factory extended no farther south than the cross roads leading to the Russell Mills on the west, and by the old Edes & Wood factory on the east.

In 1825 this road was extended, making a junction with the old road, and thus establishing the present Plymouth and Sandwich highway.

In 1830 there were in Plymouth, north of Bramhall’s corner in Chiltonville, seventeen streets so called, thirteen lanes, three squares, nine places and ways, and four alleys, concerning all of which something will be said in their order. The streets were Court, Howland, Main, North, Water, Middle, Leyden, School, Market, Spring, High, Summer, Pleasant, Sandwich, Commercial, Green and South streets. Court street, which took its present name by a vote of the town in 1823, owes its origin to no formal laying out. It practically followed the old Massachusetts path, and was a way of necessity gradually evolved from a footway, and bridle path, and cart way to its present condition. There is a tradition, which needs confirmation, that opposite the head of the present Murray street, it once made a detour to the west through the valley in the rear of the houses of Mr. Charles G. Hathaway and others, and came out into the present road at some point beyond Cold Spring. There seems to have been no necessity for such a detour, and no available route for it to pursue, and I am inclined to the belief that the tradition is unfounded. There is another tradition, which may also be distrusted, that Tinker’s Rock Spring, now known as Cold Spring, was removed by an earthquake in 1755 from the east to the west side of the street, where it now flows. There can be no doubt that it once flowed on the east side, but I was told by Mr. John Kempton Cobb, who always lived in the neighborhood of the spring, and would be now, if he were living, one hundred and nineteen years of age, that it was moved by owners of a pasture on the west side to supply water for their cattle. Within my own knowledge for many years the water after it left the pipe, turned into and out of the pasture referred to, before it crossed the street and passed through the Nelson field on its way to the harbor. When the trench was opened in 1904 for the purpose of laying a sewer, I noticed that the water from the site of the old spring on the east side was conveyed to the present outlet, through a pipe laid across the street, for which the story of the earthquake would fail to account. The boundaries of Court street, notwithstanding widenings and straightenings in various places, have remained practically as they were in 1830, except in two places. Until 1851, at what is now the head of Murray street, there was a watering place on the east side, through which teams were driven to water their horses. In the above year the easterly line of the street was straightened, and the old watering place thrown into the adjoining lots. The brook at this place was called “second brook” by the Pilgrims, the “first brook” being that which in my boyhood was called “Shaw’s brook,” and which flows, or recently did flow, between the houses of Mrs. Helen F. Hedge and Mr. Ripley, through pipes under the brick block to the harbor. The above mentioned “second brook” flows from a spring just within the lot on the west side of the street, and the bridge over it was long ago the terminus of the evening walks of loving couples who, as they turned for home formally rechristened the bridge in the most natural way as “Kissing bridge.” The other place where the street underwent an important change was at the corner of North street, which in 1892 was cut off to meet the necessities of travel then increased by the recent construction of the street railway.

The greatest change which Court street has passed through in my day, has been brought about by the rows of elm trees along its sidewalks, all of which have been set out since 1830, and most of them as far as Cold Spring by the late Andrew L. Russell, to whose public spirit the town is chiefly indebted for one of its crowning glories. In the above year the only shade trees within the bounds of Main and Court streets, between Town Square and Cold Spring, were two ash trees in front of the house on the southerly corner of North street. North of the trees set out by Mr. Russell were the old mile tree, which stood in front of the estate of the late Joab Thomas, and the trees beyond the estate of Mrs. Knapp, for which the town is indebted to the late Leavitt T. Robbins, father of our late townsman of the same name. The mile tree was struck by lightning in 1829, and not long after was blown down and replaced by that now standing. The beauty which these trees have added to the town, even lending grace and ornament to the many houses of ordinary styles of architecture along Court street, suggests a remark made many years ago by John Quincy Adams, while walking with a friend one bleak cloudy day in March, in reply to his companion who had expressed a wonder that the Pilgrims settled here. “Oh,” Mr. Adams answered, “you must remember that there were no houses here then.” Mr. Adams must have been another Jonathan who