The building in question stood ten feet or more back from the southerly line of the lot, while the building above it on the square, came out to the sidewalk. When Odd Fellows’ Hall was built the open space was built upon. About 1850 Mr. Isaac Brewster, representing the owners of the lot, erected a two story building in the yard on its northeast corner, which was occupied below for many years by Wm. Bishop, as early as 1845, as the Old Colony bookstore, and later by Charles C. Doten, and above by William Davis as a lawyer’s office, and by Benjamin Whiting and Wm. S. Robbins, photographers. In 1876 it was moved to a lot on Market street, below the bake house, where it now stands. Odd Fellows’ building had three rooms on Main street. That in the corner was occupied many years by the post office. The next was occupied by Stevens M. Burbank, H. N. P. Hubbard, and Hathaway and Sampson, and the third by Z. F. Leach, H. W. Dick, Alfred S. Burbank and Hatch & Shaw. The building was destroyed by fire January 10, 1904.
CHAPTER XIX.
There stood where the Sherman block stands until that block was built a few years ago a two story wooden building occupied in my boyhood by George W. Virgin at the south end, and by Deacon Wm. P. Ripley at the north end. These stores were at various times also occupied by Samuel Shaw & Co., Henry Tilson, Wm. Z. Ripley, Wm. T. Hollis, Southworth Barnes, Stevens M. Burbank, Thomas Holsgrove, Jacob Howland and Albert N. Fletcher.
Samuel Shaw, a son of Southworth and Maria (Churchill) Shaw, was born in Plymouth in 1808, and married Mary Gibbs, daughter of Simeon Dike, and died May 28, 1872. Mr. Virgin, the son of John and Priscilla (Cooper) Virgin, married in 1816, Mary, daughter of Isaac and Lucy (Harlow) Barnes, and died April 19, 1869. Henry Tilson, who died in January, 1835, and Wm. P. Ripley have been already referred to. William Z. Ripley, the son of William P. and Mary (Briggs) Ripley, was born in Plymouth and married Adeline B. Cushman. He finally removed to Boston. William T. Hollis, as already mentioned in connection with the Bradford tavern, was the son of Henry and Deborah (Leonard) Hollis, and was born in Plymouth in 1826. He was jointly with Thomas Prince, proprietor and editor of the Old Colony Memorial from 1861 to 1863, and of the Memorial and Rock after the Memorial was consolidated with the Plymouth Rock, jointly with Thomas Prince and George F. Andrews, from 1863 to 1864. He died unmarried at the Plymouth Rock Hotel only a few years ago. Southworth Barnes, son of William and Mercy (Carver) Barnes, was born in Plymouth, and married in 1833, Lucy, daughter of John and Lydia (Mason) Burbank. After his death, which occurred October 29, 1861, his store was taken by Stevens Mason Burbank, nephew of his wife, who married in 1851, Cornelia, daughter of Samuel and Rebecca (Bradford) Doten. The rooms over the stores in the building in question were occupied by various persons at various times for miscellaneous purposes. Among the occupants were the Plymouth Anti-Slavery Society, Thomas May, Benjamin F. Field and Abel D. Breed, tailors, Benjamin Hathaway, manufacturer of neck stocks, Clary and Burr, barbers, Dr. Sanborn, dentist, the Plymouth Free Press, newspaper, P. T. Denney, and N. A. T. Jones, tailors, Thomas B. Drew and Thomas D. Shumway, dentists.
The occupant of the next house from 1828 to 1837 was Daniel Gale, a tailor whose shop on the other side of Main street has been already mentioned. He was a son of Noah and Rebecca Gale, but where he was born and when, I do not know. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Winslow of Duxbury, and probably about 1837 moved away from Plymouth, as I find no record of his death. Like all men in his line of business in localities too small for keeping an assortment of cloth, he was only a tailor, and not a draper. Customers furnished their own cloth, and by an unwritten law the tailor was entitled to the remnants from which in time considerable profit accrued. These remnants were universally, in Plymouth at least, called cabbage. Hence the word cabbage as applied in the sense of stealing or, to use a milder phrase, of taking possession of. Mr. Gale, after a residence of some years in Plymouth, built the block of houses between Sandwich street and the Mill pond, which in my boyhood was known as Gale’s Cabbage, implying that it was built from the profits of his remnants.
Another house somewhat pretentious in style, received a name suggested by a practice more reprehensible than one which custom permitted. The owner was often employed as a surveyor to run out large lots of woodland into smaller lots for sale. In doing this work certain strips and gores of land would be omitted, and in time sold as his own. The house took the name of Strips and Gores, as having been built from the proceeds of these sales. I mention neither the house nor the name of its owner, because like many other stories, the charge may have no foundation in fact, and I have no desire to taint his memory. The next occupant of the house in question was Dr. Levi Hubbard, the brother of our townsman, Dr. Benjamin Hubbard, and father of Hervey N. P. Hubbard, the librarian of the Pilgrim Society. He was succeeded in 1841 by John Washburn, who occupied a hardware and tin shop on the street floor and the tenement above, many years. Harlow & Barnes, a firm engaged in the same business, consisting of John C. Barnes and Samuel Harlow, succeeded Mr. Washburn, and were themselves succeeded by Harlow & Bailey, the firm consisting of Samuel Harlow and H. Porter Bailey, and by H. P. Bailey & Bro., the predecessors of the firm now occupying it.
Dr. Levi Hubbard, son of Benjamin and Polly (Walker) Hubbard, was born in Holden, Mass., and after graduating at the medical college of Pittsfield, settled in Medfield, whence he moved to Plymouth in 1839, and occupied the house in question until May 29, 1841, when he moved to the north side of Town Square. In January, 1844, in consequence of a fire in the house he occupied on the square, he removed to the house above the town house, where he remained until November, 1844, when he removed to New Bedford. From New Bedford he went to Chicopee, and in 1849 to California in the ship Edward Everett, sailing from Boston. Returning in 1851 after short residences in Dutchess and Saratoga counties in New York State, he removed to Iowa, and died in Glenwood in that state in 1886. He married in 1837, Luzilla, daughter of Roger Haskell of Peru, Mass., and his son, Hervey N. P. Hubbard was born in the house under consideration, in 1839.
The site of the house next north of the store of Bailey Bros. is memorable as the site of the Bunch of Grapes Inn in the middle of the eighteenth century.
The house now standing was built by Joseph Avery, a bookseller and book binder, who had branch establishments in Worcester and Portland. In school book binding his concerns were extensive and profitable. He came to Plymouth in 1807, and up to 1816 occupied for his business one of the one story buildings on the east side of Main street already referred to. On the 29th of July, 1822, while superintending the erection of the building he incautiously stepped on a loose board and fell from the upper story to the street floor, suffering injuries which resulted in his death on the fourth of the following month at the age of forty-two years. In 1826 the house was sold to Dr. Zacheus Bartlett, who occupied it both for his business and home until his death, which occurred December 25, 1835. Dr. Bartlett was born in South Plymouth, September 20, 1768, and graduated at Harvard in 1789. He studied medicine with Dr. Ezekiel Hersey of Hingham, and settled in his native town. He served his fellow citizens as their Representative in the General Court one or more years, was one of the founders of the Pilgrim Society, and its vice-president from 1828 to 1835, and by invitation of the Town, delivered the oration on the Pilgrim anniversary in 1798. He married in 1796 Hannah, daughter of Samuel and Experience (Atwood) Jackson, and up to the time of his occupancy of the Main street house lived in a house on North street, easterly of the house now occupied by Miss Lydia Jackson. All through my boyhood there was a one story building in the southeast corner of the yard which I have always supposed was his office. As I remember the house it was still owned by Dr. Bartlett, and occupied by various tenants, and the office building was occupied by Thomas Maglathlin, who lived alone. Dr. Bartlett had four children, Sydney, the eminent lawyer who married Caroline Louisa Pratt of Boston, and for many years was recognized as the leader of the Boston bar; Margaret, who married Dr. Winslow Warren, Dr. George Bartlett of Boston, who married Amelia, a daughter of Dr. Wm. Pitt Greenwood of Boston, and Caroline, who married James Pratt of Boston. It is worthy of mention that three Plymouth men, Richard Warren, George Bartlett and Charles L. Hayward, married daughters of Dr. Wm. Pitt Greenwood. The occupation of this building by John T. Hall and others, is too recent to require notice. John T. Hall, son of Eber and Elizabeth (Burgess) Hall, was born in Plymouth and married in 1843 Betsey, daughter of Joab Thomas, and at various times kept a barber shop, a fancy goods store and engaged in insurance business.
The occupation of the site on which the store of George Gooding stands with a tenement over it, possesses unusual interest. About the year 1750 James Shurtleff built a house on the site which in 1789 came into the possession of Caleb Leach, who came to Plymouth from Bridgewater and projected the Plymouth water works, the first water works built in the United States. The company was chartered in 1796, the year after a company was chartered in Wilkesbarre, Penn., but the Plymouth works were constructed before the works of that town. The pipes were yellow or swamp pine logs, ten to twelve feet long, and ten inches in diameter, clear of sap, with a bore from two to four inches in diameter, and sharpened at one end, the other end bound with an iron hoop to prevent splitting when driven into the bore. During the latter years of the company iron connections with a flange in the middle were used.