In concluding the changes which have occurred in North street within my recollection, it only remains to be said that the Manter building on the corner of Water street was removed in 1859 from Pilgrim wharf, and stands on land formerly occupied by a tenement house, and by a small one-story building occupied by Thomas Maglathlen.
Water street, including its extension, was laid out by various acts of the town, as follows: On the 16th of February, 1715, in 1762, on the 4th of April, 1881, the 9th of December, 1893, and the 22d of June, 1895. The changes on the extension of the street, caused by the erection of the woolen mill of Mr. Mabbett, the utilization of the old Jackson lumber yard by Mr. Craig and the erection of the Brockton and Plymouth trolley electric plant, have been so recent that no reference to them is necessary. With the exception of the foundry, which was built to take the place of the foundry burned in 1856, and the electric light building on the corner of Leyden street, no new structure has changed in my day the general character of the street.
In my youth, and later, there were eight buildings on the westerly side of the street between North street and the steps at the foot of Middle street. In the rear of these houses there were two terraces supported by stone walls, and some of the houses were entered by flights of steps leading down from the top of the hill. In 1856, and in the years immediately succeeding, the Pilgrim Society bought all these estates, and after the removal of the houses graded the slope as it is seen today. The granite steps from the surface of the hill to the canopy over the Rock was built by private subscription. The graded bank is the property of the Pilgrim Society, and the surface of the hill, which belongs to the town, was placed by a vote of the town under the superintendence and care of the society.
Until recently there were also eight buildings between the way leading to the Middle street steps and the grass bank on Leyden street. By the will of J. Henry Stickney of Baltimore, who died May 3, 1893, the sum of $21,000 was given to a board of trustees for the purpose of buying and removing these houses and grading the bank. The board of trustees consists of the chairman of the selectmen, the presidents of the two national banks, the president and secretary of the Pilgrim Society, the president of the Plymouth Savings Bank, and the judge of probate and treasurer of Plymouth county, and their successors in said offices. All the estates have been bought except that owned by Winslow Brewster Standish, and the grading as far as practicable has been done.
The only remaining change in the street to be referred to is that associated with Pilgrim wharf and the Rock. Until 1859 the wharf was devoted to commercial uses. In that year the upper part of the wharf came into the possession of the Pilgrim Society, and the building which had stood on the northerly corner of the wharf was moved to the corner of Water and North streets, and eventually came into the possession of Mr. Manter, its present occupant.
Two buildings on the south side, between the wharf and the store of Mr. Atwood, were also bought by the society and removed. That on the corner had for many years been occupied in its lower story by a cooper shop and in its upper story by the sail loft of Daniel Goddard, and the other had been occupied as a store successively by Richard Holmes, Holmes & Scudder, Holmes & Brewster and John Churchill.
In 1883 the Pilgrim Society bought the entire wharf, and after removing the store houses standing on it fitted it for a steamboat landing exclusively. The corner stone of the canopy over the Rock was laid on the 2d of August, 1859, and the structure was completed in 1867. It was designed by Hammatt Billings, but follows very closely the plan of the Arch of Trajan built on one of the moles of the harbor of Ancona on the shores of the Adriatic. The use of scallop shells on its top was suggested by the fact that this shell was the emblem worn by the Pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. The word Pilgrim, as applied to the Plymouth colonists, was never used, as far as I can learn, for more than a hundred and seventy years after the landing. They were called “first-comers” and “forefathers” until 1794, when Judge John Davis, in his ode written for the anniversary celebration in that year first used the word “Pilgrim” in the following verse:
“Columbia, child of heaven,
The best of blessings given,
Be thine to greet;