The next store was occupied at various times by Bridgham Russell, Jeremiah Farris, Benjamin Hathaway, Henry Howard Robbins, Edward Bartlett, Reuben Peterson, Lewis Peterson, and Wm. F. Peterson. Mr. Russell has already been referred to. Mr. Farris was a son of Jeremiah and Lydia (Eldridge) Farris of Barnstable, and was born in that town in 1810. He married in 1832 Mary, daughter of Nathaniel and Betsey (Woodward) Carver of Plymouth, and settled in Plymouth. He first formed a partnership in the dry goods business with Benjamin Hathaway, and after the partnership was dissolved Mr. Hathaway continued in business, and added the business of making neck stocks. Not long after Mr. Farris joined with Oliver Edes in the manufacture of rivets in North Marshfield, and Plymouth, and finally established the Plymouth Mills, which is still in active business as a corporation under the management of his son-in-law, Wm. P. Stoddard. Mr. Farris was the sixth captain of the Standish Guards. Mr. Hathaway afterwards continued the stock business in other locations, and the first time I ever saw Chief Justice Albert Mason, he was at a bench in Mr. Hathaway’s shop cutting out material for stocks. Nothing in the career of Mr. Mason as artisan, lawyer, soldier and Judge, impressed me as much as his resolve while working at his bench to change the current of his life. The flow of the tide never specially impresses me, but when I see the buoys change their slant from East to West, I begin to wonder.
Mr. Mason was the son of Albert T. and Arlina (Orcutt) Mason, and was born in Middleboro, Mass., Nov. 7, 1836. He came to Plymouth in 1853, and after working a short time in Mr. Hathaway’s stock factory, he studied law in Plymouth with Edward L. Sherman, and was admitted to the Plymouth bar Feb. 15, 1860. In July, 1862, I was requested to raise two companies to be attached to the 38th Regiment, and recommend their officers, and in accordance with that request I raised Companies D and G, and recommended Mr. Mason for the post of second lieutenant of Company D. He was duly commissioned, and afterwards promoted to be first lieutenant, Captain and Assistant Brigade Quartermaster. At the close of the war he resumed practice in Plymouth, and in 1874, removing to Brookline, was appointed by Governor Washburn a member of the Board of Harbor Commissioners. In 1879 he was appointed a member of the Board of Harbor and Land Commissioners by Governor Talbot; Judge of the Superior Court by Governor Long in 1882, and Chief Justice in 1890 by Governor Brackett. He married November 25, 1857, Lydia F., daughter of Nathan and Experience (Finney) Whiting of Plymouth. In 1893 he received from Dartmouth the degree of LL. D., and died in Brookline January 2, 1906.
Henry Howard Robbins was the son of Rufus and Margaret (Howard) Robbins, and was born in Plymouth in 1811. He was a hatter by trade, and at various times occupied other stores on Main street. My first recollection of him was as a member of the old Plymouth Band, organized soon after 1830. The members of the band, according to my recollection, were Bradford Barnes, leader, clarinet; William Atwood, trombone; John Atwood, serpent; Eleazer H. Barnes, cornopean; James M. Bradford, bassoon; Samuel H. Doten, clarinet; John N. Drew, trombone; Nathaniel D. Drew, bugle; Edward Hathaway, bass drum; Albert Leach, bugle; Thomas Long, fife; Seth Morton, snare drum; Edmund Robbins, orphicleide; Henry Howard Robbins, clarinet; Albert Finney, bugle, and Ellis Rogers, bass drum.
The orphicleide, one of the instruments above mentioned, had a short career, and has not only gone out of use, but also almost out of memory. I have been unable to find any one besides myself who remembers it. The proprietor of the music store in Plymouth never heard of it. No one in the store of John C. Haynes & Co., of Boston, remembers it, and the leader of the band in Cambridge on Commencement Day told me that he had no recollection of it. I remember it distinctly, a brass instrument about three feet long and six inches in its largest diameter, and with a curved mouthpiece, resembling somewhat that of the bassoon. The snare drum, which in its oblong form stood the test of four hundred years, has since my youth degenerated into the present instrument, which resembles in shape and size a generous Herkimer county cheese. The trombone, probably the ancient sackbut, has held its own, and is the oldest musical instrument now in use. Mr. Robbins married Mercy Morton, daughter of John Eddy, and died December 19, 1872.
Reuben Peterson was the son of Elijah and Abigail (Whittemore) Peterson of Duxbury, and was born in that town about 1788, and married in 1812 Mary, daughter of Benjamin White of Hanover. He was a hatter by trade, and he, as well as his son Lewis, who died October 5, 1878, and grandson, William F., now living, are remembered by my readers.
Edward Bartlett was a harness maker, and occupied this as well as other stores. He was the son of Stephen and Polly (Nye) Bartlett, and was born in Plymouth. He married Betsey Beal of Kingston, and died within the memory of many readers.
Mr. Hathaway above-mentioned, retiring from active business, became a director of the Plymouth National Bank and devoted himself to the care of his ample property. He married in 1828 Hannah, daughter of William Nye of Plymouth, and second in 1857, Sally Barnes, daughter of George W. Virgin, and died July 15, 1880.
In my early youth the second story was occupied by Mrs. Francis Leonard Maynard and Dr. Hervey N. Preston. Mrs. Maynard, the daughter of Major William and Anna (Barnes) Jackson, was born in Plymouth in 1789, and married February 5, 1821, Samuel Maynard. She occupied the whole front of two rooms on Main street, and one room on the northerly side of the building separated from the other two by a narrow entry to which access was had by an outside flight of stairs leading from Main street. The corner room on the square she occupied as a schoolroom, in which she taught boys and girls from about six to ten years of age. I was one of her pupils, and must have entered the school as early as 1828, because I remember seeing the engines go by on their way to the fire which burned the anchor works in that year. Among my fellow pupils I can recall Jane Elizabeth Bartlett, daughter of James Bartlett, who married Thatcher R. Raymond; Mary Holbrook, daughter of Jacob Covington, who married George H. Bates of Brooklyn, N. Y., and her sister Martha, Betsey Foster Ripley, daughter of Deacon Wm. Putnam and Elizabeth Foster (Morton) Ripley, Priscilla and Barnabas Hedge, children of Isaac L. Hedge, and Francis L. and George Maynard, children of the teacher. Mrs. Maynard was at that time a widow and an ideal schoolmistress. She was an accomplished lady, and taught not only the ordinary branches of a school education, but also sewing and, above all, good manners. I carried away from her school as evidence of my industry and skill a section of a patchwork bed quilt, and I trust also some of the fruits of her lessons in deportment. I may incidentally say that the wife of Rev. Dr. Mann of Trinity church in Boston is a grandchild of Mrs. Bates, one of the pupils above mentioned. I think that Lucy Ann Jackson, a granddaughter of Benjamin Crandon, was also a pupil, and much the oldest girl in the school, who is now remembered because I recall the dinners she brought to eat at the noon recess. Mrs. Maynard’s daughter Frances married a lawyer in St. Louis, and her son disappeared from my memory soon after my schoolboy days. The chief punishment in the school was standing in the corner wearing a foolscap, and one girl who was exemplary and conscientious in after life, scarcely passed a day without suffering this punishment.
The chambers in the westerly end of the house occupied by Dr. Preston, were reached by a door with a projecting porch on the southerly side of the building eight or ten feet from the town tree, which stood on what is now the gutter in the square. The stairway from the outside door led to a broad hall above which separated the school room from Dr. Preston’s sitting room. These two rooms had broad folding doors which were used when the building was a hotel, and called after its owner, the Witherell tavern. John Howland, who died in Newport not many years ago at the age of 97, said in his diary, “that at the Pilgrim celebration, December 2, 1803, the dinner was held in a large old house, in which the partitions in the chambers had been removed to make room for the tables.” He doubtless took it for granted that what were really doorways were openings made for the occasion. I remember well the folding doors. Dr. Preston came to Plymouth in 1829. He was the son of Amariah and Hannah (Reed) Preston, and was born in Bedford, Mass., June 21, 1806. He married a Miss Sargent, and practiced in Plymouth until his death, which occurred in Boston July 14, 1837.
The later occupants of the second story were Thomas Loring, Augustus Deming, Lydia Keyes, who died June 30, 1873, at the age of 75 years, and Jacob Howland, who died June 3, 1876, at the age of 82 years.