Plymouth memories of an octogenarian

by William T. Davis

CHAPTER III.

During my early life a house stood in North street between the house of Mrs. Ruth H. Baker and the present Plymouth Rock House, concerning the occupants of which I must say a word. It was a double house, the westerly end of which was occupied by Ebenezer Drew, his wife Deborah, or Aunt Debby, as she was called, and his brother Malachi. Ebenezer had no children and Malachi was a bachelor. They were the salt of the earth and the salt had not lost its savor. Without the three it would have been difficult for some of the neighbors, including my mother, to keep house. Malachi repaired the leaks in the roof, eased the doors, mended the chairs and kept the house generally in running order. Uncle Eben did the chores, fed and scratched the pig, sawed, split and piled the wood and wheeled our corn to the mill, taking care that Sylvanus Maxim, the miller, did not take out too much toll. In those days, every family bought or raised its own corn and sent it to the mill to be ground. When the steamboat arrived, if one happened to be running, Eben was always on the wharf with his handcart ready to take the luggage of passengers to their homes. I can see the old man now scraping with his jackknife the apples I occasionally gave him, which, with his loss of teeth, he could neither bite nor chew. He died January 6, 1851, at the age of 77 years.

But chief of “the blessed three” was Aunt Debby. She assisted in making soap and candles, would nurse the sick, diagnose the various diseases of children, such as measles, by their smell, administer picra and “yarb” tea, staunch the blood of a cut finger with cobwebs and with the buds of the balsam poplar, or balm of Gilead, heal the wound. She was the forerunner, too, of those who with no more accuracy than she exhibited, foretell the number of a winter’s snow storms. In my college vacation my first visit was always to her, and at Thanksgiving time it was often my privilege to bear a turkey and a couple of pies to her scanty board. She died April 15, 1844, at the age of 72. Peace to her ashes.

The easterly part of the house was occupied by William Collingwood, a worthy and intelligent Englishman, the father of our respected townsmen, George and James Bartlett Collingwood. He had been a manufacturer of pottery in Sunderland, in the shire of Durham, but owing to reverses he was induced to come to America, and took passage in 1819 with Capt. Plasket of Nantucket, bringing with him his wife Eleanor (Harrow) Collingwood and two sons, George and William, one year old. He settled in Nantucket, the home of Capt. Plasket, where he remained until 1825, when James Bartlett, who, with others, owned two ships in the whale fishery, induced him to come to Plymouth and take charge of the oil and candle works then recently established, which were situated between the house of the late Jesse R. Atwood and the shore. As long as the works remained in operation he was at their head, and afterwards for a time kept a restaurant at the corner of North and Water streets. He died in Plymouth in 1866, at the age of 76, and his wife died in 1884, at the age of 90. Three of Mr. Collingwood’s sons died in the civil war. Joseph W., born in Nantucket January 5, 1822, was captain in Company H, 18th Massachusetts regiment, and died in a field hospital December 24, 1862, of wounds received at the battle of Fredericksburg on the 13th of that month. John B., born December 30, 1825, was adjutant of the 29th Massachusetts regiment and died in St. John’s Hospital in Cincinnati, August 21, 1863. Thomas, born November 10, 1831, was a corporal in Company E, 29th Massachusetts regiment, and died at Camp Banks, Crab Orchard, Ky., August 31, 1863.

In 1843 Mrs. Collingwood was summoned to England to secure by identification an inheritance of property. She had then reached middle life, but, nevertheless, without a companion or attendant, she sailed on the 1st of July in the above year in the Cunard steamer Columbia, from Boston for Halifax and Liverpool. The Columbia, like all the earliest boats of the Cunard line, was a paddle wheel boat of about 1,200 tons. I know very well what those boats were, for I made a passage in the Hibernia of the same line in March, 1847, and I often wonder that in such small crafts, with one wheel buried in every roll of the sea, passengers were willing to expose themselves to the hazards of a winter passage. On Sunday, the second day out, when 240 miles from Boston, while still in charge of the pilot who, in accordance with the custom prevailing while the steamers called at Halifax, remained on board, the Columbia, in a thick fog, having been carried out of her course by an unusual Bay of Fundy current, struck a sloping rock on Black Ledge about a mile and a quarter from Seal Island, and 25 miles from Barrington, Nova Scotia, the nearest port on the mainland. Fortunately the sea was smooth and when the fog lifted a fishing schooner nearby came to the ship and with the boats of the steamer transferred to the island the passengers, 95 in number, including those in the steerage, and 73 officers and men, with luggage and the mails. The cargo was eventually saved, but the ship was a total loss. While on the island a sort of colonial government was established with Mr. Abbot Lawrence of Boston, one of the passengers at its head, to prevent excesses and possible disturbance, and a passing vessel was sent to Halifax with news of the wreck. In due time the steamer Margaret took them to that port, most of the passengers and crew continuing their passage in her to Liverpool. For the kindness and attention shown to Mrs. Collingwood by Mr. Lawrence she was always grateful. The valet of Mr. Lawrence was James Burr, a colored boy from Plymouth, who often with pride recounted to me the story of his adventure.

It is a little singular that our townsman, Robert Swinburn, recently deceased at an advanced age, came to Plymouth when a young man from Sunderland, the town in which Mr. Collingwood lived, and where he also was engaged in the employment of a potter, and should twenty years later than the voyage of Mrs. Collingwood have been also summoned to England for the purpose of obtaining an inheritance. A circumstance connected with the loss of the Columbia, which reminds us of the changes which have occurred in the facilities of communication, is the fact that the news of the wreck, which occurred on Sunday, the 2d of July, did not reach Boston until Sunday, the 9th.

I have given the loss of the Columbia a prominence in these memories because it was the only loss which the Cunard company has suffered during its career of 64 years, except that of the Oregon, a steamer sold to the company by another line after a collision and a transfer of her passengers to another vessel, which foundered near Fire Island. Two other ocean steamers had been previously lost, the President, with all on board, in 1841, and the West India packet steamer Solway, off Corunna, in April, 1843, with her captain and fifty lives.

Returning from this digression to North street, from which I have wandered long and far, I wish to correct a statement, based on misinformation, made by me in “Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth,” that the Willoughby house, built by Edward Winslow in 1755, was confiscated. Mr. Winslow held the office of collector of the port of Plymouth, registrar of wills and clerk of the superior court of common pleas, and the salaries from these offices, though he was not a rich man, enabled him to live in luxury and ease. He was generous to the poor and lavish in his entertainment of families in the aristocratic circles. He was a loyalist of the most pronounced type, and consequently lost his offices at the breaking out of the revolution. As nearly as I can learn from family records he remained in Plymouth several years, evidently assisted by friends, some of whom in a quiet way shared his loyalty to the king. In December, 1781, he reached the British garrison in New York with a part of his family, the remainder joining him at a later period. Sir Henry Clinton allowed him a pension of £200 per annum, with rations and fuel. On the 30th of August, 1783, he embarked with his wife, two daughters and three colored servants from New York and arrived at Halifax on the 14th of September. He died in Halifax the next year, 70 years of age. The house in question was taken on execution by his creditors, consisting of the town of Plymouth, Thomas Davis, William Thomas, Oakes Angier and John Rowe, and in 1782, 1789, 1790 and 1791 it was sold by the above parties to Thomas Jackson. In 1813 it passed under an execution from Thomas Jackson to his cousin, Charles Jackson, the father of the late Dr. Charles T. Jackson and Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Edward Winslow, son of the above, graduated in Harvard in 1765, and at the time of the revolution was naval officer of the port of Plymouth and held the offices of clerk of the court and register of probate jointly with his father. He joined the British army in Boston and went with Lord Percy on his disastrous expedition to Lexington and Concord, and was later appointed by Gen. Gage collector of Boston and register of probate for Suffolk county. At the evacuation of Boston, March 17, 1776, he went with the army to Halifax, where he was made by Sir William Howe secretary of the board of general officers, of which Lord Percy was president, for the distribution of donations to the troops. He afterwards went to New York and was appointed muster master general of the forces, and acted in that capacity during the war. In 1779 he was chosen by refugees in Rhode Island to command them, and served during two campaigns. After the war he was military secretary until the death of his father, and in 1785 went to New Brunswick, where he held the positions of king’s counsellor and paymaster of contingencies, and died in 1815.

In the Winslow house above referred to Ralph Waldo Emerson married, August 22, 1835, Lydia Jackson, daughter of Charles and Lucy (Cotton) Jackson. I have a distinct recollection of the first time I ever saw Mr. Emerson, and I have no doubt that it was the first time he ever visited Plymouth. It was, I feel sure, in 1833, soon after he left the pulpit of the Second Unitarian church in Boston and after he had begun his career as a lecturer. It is said that his first lecture was delivered before the Boston Mechanics Institute on the very practical subject of “Water.” At the time referred to he lectured in Pilgrim Hall on Socrates, and was the guest of Nathaniel Russell, whose daughter, Mary Howland Russell, born in 1803, was an intimate friend of Lydia Jackson, born in 1802. I believe that I am justified in assuming that on that visit he first saw his future wife. I remember well his appearance and manners on the lecture platform, and as a boy of eleven years I thought him oracular and dull. In the same year the wandering piper with his kilt and bagpipe appeared also in Pilgrim Hall, and Potter, the ventriloquist, entertained audiences by swallowing swords, and I am almost afraid to say that the exhibitions gave me more pleasure than the lecture. But my eyes had not at that early age been opened. Dr. Holmes once asked an English gentleman to whom he had just been introduced, how he liked America, and on receiving the reply that he had been in the country only nine days, told him that a pup required only nine days to open its eyes. But the doctor never hesitated to sacrifice courtesy for the sake of a joke, as the following story will further show: Hearing one evening at a party the name of a gentleman present, whom he had never seen before, he asked him if he were a relative of an apothecary of that name, and on receiving the answer that he was his son, he told him that he thought he recognized in his face the “liniments” of his father. But to return to Mr. Emerson, my eyes have been opened.