In 1834 Danville Bryant became the landlord, and from that time until it was burned, the hotel was called the Pilgrim House. Whence Mr. Bryant came, or where he went, I have no means of knowing, but he continued in the hotel until 1840. His daughter, Abigail, married Horace B. Taylor. It was during his administration, and that of Mr. Wright, that the famous line of stages to and from Boston was established, and continued until the opening of the Old Colony Railroad in 1845. As I remember it the line consisted of an accommodation and a mail stage. The accommodation left Plymouth at six or seven o’clock each day, and returning left Boston at two, going through West Duxbury, Pembroke, Hanover, West Scituate, Weymouth Landing, Quincy and Dorchester. The mail stage left Boston at five o’clock in the morning, arriving at Plymouth at ten-thirty, when a return stage took passengers from the Cape, arriving by the stage driven by Wm. Boyden, and the Boyden stage took the passengers bound to the Cape. The route of the mail stage would be one day the same as that of the accommodation, and the next it would turn off at West Scituate and go through Hingham to Quincy, and so into Boston. The mail stage carried two pouches, one containing the through mail from the Cape, and the other containing the way mail, which would be thrown off at the various post offices to deliver and receive the mail to and from that office.
I remember the various lines of stages running every day into and out of Boston, and I can say that no better horses or better drivers could be seen than those on the Plymouth line. There were in Boston various stage houses, Wilde’s on Elm street, Doolittle’s City tavern on Brattle street, the Washington House on Washington street, and others. The Plymouth stage office was in the City Tavern on Brattle street, and there orders were left for calls by the stage for passengers. The business on the line was good, and extra stages were frequently required to meet the demand. It was a busy scene in front of the Pilgrim House about half past ten on the arrival and departure of the Boston and Cape stages, and Geo. Drew, the manager of the line, might be seen here and there with a red bandana handkerchief hanging from his teeth, giving directions and orders.
The drivers were as good as the horses. There were Capt. Woodward, Granville Gardner, Samuel Gardner, Benjamin Bates, John Bates, Asa Pierce, Phineas Pierce, Mr. Burgess, Mr. Orcutt, and I think at one time, Jacob Sprague. John Bates was perhaps the king of the line, wearing in suitable weather, a white beaver hat, a brown suit of clothes, well polished boots, and neat gloves. He was no more proud of his team than the team was of him. After the line was broken up by the railroad he drove for some years what was called a Roxbury hourly, running with its alternate mate from that part of Washington street between State street and Cornhill, to the Norfolk house and back. He always drove four horses, and his omnibus was not far from twenty feet long, and to reach his Boston station he would drive up Court street and down Cornhill. Mr. Bates married in 1827 Hannah S., daughter of John Faunce of Plymouth, but I know neither the place or date of his death.
Another estimable and much respected driver was Phineas Pierce, the father of Phineas Pierce, now a retired merchant in Boston, and a recent member of the School Committee in that city, and a trustee of the Boston Public Library. He married in 1829 Dorcas M., daughter of Caleb Faunce of Plymouth, and died August 10, 1841. His death was a sad one. He stopped at Hanover to take a passenger, and in strapping the trunks on the rack of the stage he stood on the hub of the hind wheel, and throwing himself back with his whole weight on the strap, the strap broke, and falling to the ground, he was instantly killed.
There were other lines of stages within my recollection running to New Bedford, Middleboro and Bridgewater, with headquarters at Bradford’s and Randall’s taverns in which Oliver Harris, Theophilus Rickard and Henry Carter and others were employed as drivers. Mr. Carter, who drove the Bridge water stage some years, married in 1833, Maria Bartlett Banks, and for many years before his death he was the Plymouth station master of the Old Colony Railroad. Mr. Harris came from New Bedford and married in 1835 Ruth Rogers (Goddard) Fish, widow of Samuel Fish, and daughter of Benjamin Goddard of Plymouth. Our late townsmen, Capt. Wm. O. Harris and Christopher T. Harris, were his sons.
The dancing school which I attended in the Plymouth Hotel, was kept by F. C. Schaffer in 1833 and 1834. There were no local dancing masters in those days, and professionals occupied the field, and as the lawyers say, followed the circuit. They would arrange schools in different towns for five afternoons and evenings in the week, and drive from one to another, reaching their homes on Saturday. There were other professionals who preceded and followed Mr. Schaffer, among whom were S. Whitney in 1828, and Lovet Stimson in 1830, who taught in Burbank’s hall on Middle street. At the rear end of the Burbank house, which stood immediately above the present house of Winslow S. Holmes, there was a two story projection, the lower part of which was occupied by Samuel Burbank’s bake house, above which was the hall in question. All I remember of the schools in that hall is that on the closing night of the term in one or the other, when pupils were permitted to dance until twelve o’clock, and invite their friends, a terrific thunder storm set in before midnight with heavy rain and fearful lightning, which continued so that pupils and parents, my mother with the rest, were unable to reach home until the small hours of the morning. In those days it was the fashion for women to wear as stiffeners in their corsets busks made of wood or whalebone or steel, and doubtless on that as on similar occasions, those who wore steel drew them deftly from their waists, and put them where the lightning would fail to find them.
While Danville Bryant was keeping the Pilgrim House, men more or less generally adopted the fashion of wearing skin tight trousers spreading closely over the instep and fastened with a strap under the foot. The most conspicuous persons in Plymouth to adopt this fashion were Mr. Bryant and Capt. Simeon Dike. Of course the trousers and boots had to be put on and off together, thus making the fashion too troublesome to last, and by a process of evolution the cloth or leather gaiters followed. It is as true in dress as in other things that one extreme follows another, and so the next fashion for men was for loose trousers with full plaited or gathered bodies.
In 1840 the Pilgrim House passed into the hands of Francis J. Goddard, who kept it two or three years, and was succeeded by Stephen Lucas, who again was succeeded in 1845 by Joseph White. Of course Mr. Goddard, son of Daniel and Beulah (Simmons) Goddard, is remembered by most of my readers. Mr. Lucas was a man of varied occupations during his long life. A wheelwright by trade, he kept several kinds of stores later, a stable on School street, the Pilgrim House, a photograph saloon, and last a fruit store, as the predecessor of Charles H. Churchill on Main street. He was the son of Samuel and Jemima (Robbins) Lucas of Carver, and married in 1820 Rebecca Holmes of Plymouth, and died November 23, 1888. Joseph White, previous to his taking the hotel, had a stall in the Plymouth market. The Hotel was burned June 20, 1846, and Mr. White left Plymouth and carried on a boarding house in Boston on the corner of Bedford and Lincoln streets.
The Pilgrim House was burned as I have stated, June 20, 1846. I was in Europe at the time, but my letters from home told me about the midnight fire, and about the appearance on the scene of Dr. Wm. J. Walker, a director of the Old Colony Railroad, in his drawers. He was occupying for the summer the house on North street now occupied by the Misses Russell.
After the Masonic building, then called the Union building, was built on the site of the Pilgrim house, one of its first tenants was Dr. Samuel Merritt, already fully referred to in a former chapter, who occupied the two rooms on the corner, one for his office, and one for his sleeping room. After Dr. Merritt went to California in 1849, the rooms were occupied successively by Dr. F. B. Brewer, dentist, Dr. Robert D. Foster, and Dr. Sylvanus Bramhall, also dentists, and by Dr. James L. Hunt. Winslow S. Holmes at one time occupied a barber shop in a rear room on Middle street, and also at one time, Charles T. May and Lysander Dunham had shops in the northerly Main street room. The other occupants of the street floor and basement, many of whom will be recalled by my readers, have been too numerous to mention. The corner room upstairs was occupied in 1850 by Wm. H. Spear, attorney-at-law, and the other room, together with the hall, called Union Hall, was used by the Standish Guards. Until 1869, when the building came into the possession of the Masons, the hall was used for miscellaneous purposes, including dancing schools kept by Wm. Atwood and others, cotillion parties, lectures and exhibitions.