Plymouth memories of an octogenarian

by William T. Davis

Ponto reminds me of another dog which belonged to John J. Russell, when he lived in the Cotton house, which stood where Brewster street enters Court street. Mr. Russell bought of Warren Douglas of Half Way Pond one of a litter of hound pups with the agreement to take him when he became old enough to be of use. When he thought it about time to bring him home he went for him, and it being a rainy day he held the pup by a chain between his feet beneath the boot which excluded all sight of the road over which he had never before travelled. At the end of a fortnight, thinking that the pup had been chained to his kennel long enough to become domesticated, he unfastened his chain with the intention of giving him his breakfast. Preferring, however, freedom to breakfast, the pup hopped over the fence, and was last seen running up Court square. Mr. Russell, thinking he might have found his way to Half Way Pond, drove there the next day, and there was the pup. On comparing notes with Mr. Douglas, it was found that the little fellow had travelled ten miles in less than two hours. So much for the instinct of Ponto and the hound pup. If we ask what instinct is, it might be correct to say that it is the gift of God unimpaired by education. The homing pigeon has it when she finds her way to her distant nest. The Indian has it somewhat qualified by civilization when he laughs at the white man who needs a watch to show the lapse of time. The Christian has it, beyond the realm of reason, a divine teacher assuring him of a life beyond the grave, a belief in which the device of human education has done much to impair if not destroy. But without further suggestion I submit these mysteries to the investigation of my readers and pass on.

The Old Plymouth Bank building stood until recently where the Russell building now stands. It was bought by the bank at the time of its incorporation in 1803, and a brick addition was erected at its southerly end for the accommodation of the bank. William Goodwin, who had served as cashier from the foundation of the bank, died July 17, 1825, and Nathaniel Goodwin was chosen to succeed him. He moved at once into the bank house, and continued to occupy it until his resignation as cashier in 1845, when he moved into the house on the corner of Middle and Carver streets, where he died February 13, 1857. In early life he carried on the manufacture of rope in Nantucket, and later in Beverly. He was the son of General Nathaniel Goodwin, and was born in 1770 in the house on Leyden street, owned and occupied by his father, and afterwards long kept as a hotel by John Howland Bradford, and known as Bradford’s tavern. He married in 1794 Lydia, daughter of Nathaniel Gardner of Nantucket, and had seven children, only four of whom I remember, Lydia Coffin, 1800, who married Thomas Hedge; Albert Gardner, 1802, who married 1831 Eliza Huzzey of Nantucket, and 1840 Eliza Ann, daughter of Joseph Bartlett, and Nathaniel, 1809, who married, 1833, Arabella, daughter of William White of New Bedford. Mr. Goodwin was the last person in Plymouth to wear a cue. Mrs. Goodwin was a quakeress, always wearing the garb of her faith, which was further illustrated by her gentle spirit and kindly words.

That part of the house used for a dwelling was occupied at various times after Mr. Goodwin moved to Middle street by Samuel Lanman, George F. Andrews, and Frank A. Johnson, the last of whom kept a public house under the name of the Winslow House. The old banking room was used by Daniel J. Jane and Samuel Merriam, shoe manufacturers; Charles F. Hathaway, for a general store; Joseph P. Brown, cabinet maker, and Frank A. Johnson in connection with his hotel. It is only necessary to say further in connection with the old bank building that it was taken down and the Russell building erected on its site in 1892.

Daniel J. Lane manufactured one hundred thousand pairs of boots and shoes annually, and gave employment to about one hundred and sixty hands. There were other manufacturers of shoes about the same time, of whom it will be well to speak: S. Blake & Co., who made one hundred and twenty thousand pairs, employing about two hundred hands, having their headquarters in Leyden hall building; John Churchill, Benjamin Bramhall, William Morey, Henry Mills and Nathaniel Cobb Lanman, in whose shop on Allerton street William L. Douglas was a workman.

George Gustavus Dyer came to Plymouth with Mr. Blake from Abington, and after serving as bookkeeper for his company, was elected cashier of the Old Colony Bank. Mr. Dyer was the son of Christopher and Mary (Porter) Dyer of Abington, and married in 1852 Mary Ann Bartlett, daughter of Schuyler Sampson. After some years’ service as cashier of the Old Colony Bank, he was chosen President, and died January 9, 1891.

The shoe business in the days to which I have referred was conducted very differently from the methods in vogue today. The headquarters not necessarily extensive, were used for the reception of stock, the cutting of the leather, the shipment of shoes and the business office. When the leather was cut shoemakers would call periodically for packages of uppers, and linings and heels, and making the shoes at home would bring them to the office and carry home a new supply. They would furnish their own tools and thread and nails and pegs, and consequently the need existed of local stores, such as that which was kept on Main street by Harrison Finney for shoe kit and findings. These shoemakers did their work at home, and there was scarcely a house in the smaller towns which did not have its small shop on the premises where the cut material was converted into shoes for the more or less distant manufacturer. In consequence of the change above mentioned, the local kit stores were abandoned, and there was a gradual flow of population from the farming towns where the little workshops were located to the large towns, Abington, Brockton, Rockland, Plymouth and Whitman, where the factories were built. This is one of the causes of the falling off of population in the smaller towns, and of the rapid growth of the larger ones. There are indications now of a reflex tide, as a result of the facilities afforded by trolley cars for workmen to seek distant homes where the cost of living is moderate, and where in dull seasons farming can be carried on with profit.

The building which stood on the corner of Court and North streets, which was taken down and replaced by the Howland building in 1888, was occupied as long ago as I can remember by Dr. Rossiter Cotton. He was the son of John and Hannah (Sturtevant) Cotton, and was born in 1758. He married in 1783 Priscilla, daughter of Thomas Jackson, and had nine children, of whom I only remember two, Charles, born in 1788, and Rowland Edwin, born in 1802.

Dr. Cotton practiced medicine in Plymouth about twenty years, and retired from his profession in 1807. He seems to have inherited the right to hold county offices. His grandfather, Josiah Cotton, was Register of Deeds and County Treasurer from 1713 to 1756; his father, John Cotton, held both offices from 1756 to 1789, and he held the same offices from 1789 to his death, August 12, 1837. His son, Rowland Edwin, continued in the office of Register from 1837 to 1846. Thus the office of Register was held in the family through four generations, one hundred and thirty-three years, and the office of Treasurer through three generations, one hundred and twenty-four years. Dr. Cotton was an antiquarian, and I find on the records many of his memoranda and plans, which aid materially in elucidating matters which without them it would have been difficult to understand. His son, Charles Cotton, graduated at Harvard in 1808, and settled as a physician in Newport, where he married a Miss Northam, and had a family of children, of whom I only remember four, Rossiter, Thomas, Charles and Sophia. He removed to Plymouth in 1831, occupying the house under consideration, where he practised until his father’s death in 1837, when he returned to Newport, where he died. The three boys attended the high school with me, and must have been all within two years of my age. I remember two incidents of our school days, with which they are associated. I have referred in a former chapter to the rule, while Mr. William H. Lord was the teacher, for each boy to repeat at the opening of the school in the morning a verse from the bible. One day Rossiter received a flogging for some offense, and the next morning he repeated in his turn, “For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth.” The other incident occurred while Mr. Isaac N. Stoddard was teacher. Dr. Cotton thought his son Charles had been either unjustly or too severely whipped, so arming himself with a whip he went to Mrs. Nicolson’s hotel where Mr. Stoddard boarded, with the intention of flogging him. But he reckoned without his host, and when he raised his whip, Mr. Stoddard, seizing him by the collar, laid him on the floor, and taking his whip away sent him home.

In 1833 scarlet fever prevailed extensively in Plymouth, and was very fatal. In a population of 5,000 the number of deaths during the year was one hundred and sixty-seven, of which sixty-seven were of children under ten years of age. Taking the population of Plymouth in 1904 of 11,118, and the number of deaths in that year, one hundred and fifty-seven, as a basis, the normal number of deaths in the population of five thousand in 1833, would have been less than seventy. I remember that a daughter of Dr. Charles Cotton, either Sophia or another whose name I do not recall, died of the prevailing disease, and that I was one of the pall bearers at her funeral. It was the invariable custom in those days, never varied from, to have pall bearers for old and young, and in cases of funerals of children, Clement Bates, the sexton, would call at the High school and ask for a detail of six boys for service at one or more of the funerals on that day. As well as I can remember, no precautions were taken to prevent the spread of the contagion, and funerals were attended as usual, and no quarantine was established. I have no doubt that during the visitation of the sickness I served as pall bearer at least a dozen times.

Some years later I narrowly escaped serious inconvenience arising from municipal precautions against contagious diseases. In February, 1857, I had a schooner in the West India trade, and when after her departure from Boston in the early part of that month I thought her well on her way towards her destination, I received a telegram from Thomas Everett Cornish, her master, that she had been caught by the ice in the bay soon after leaving Boston, and driven by the prevailing northwest gales into Truro Bay, where she was in the ice jam a week, during which she had received damages which she was now repairing in Provincetown. I at once drove to Sandwich, and taking the cars for Yarmouth, then the terminus of the Cape Cod Railroad, drove to Truro, reaching there about midnight. The next morning I hired a conveyance to Provincetown, reaching there for dinner. After dinner I boarded the schooner, where carpenters were at work getting out new stanchions for the damaged bulwarks. While talking in the cabin with Capt. Cornish, who was bald, and had taken off his hat, I noticed some pustules on his scalp which I saw at once were the pustules of varioloid. Fearing that he might become sick and would require a substitute for the voyage, I called on Dr. Stone, who fortunately was an old friend, and took him to see the Captain, whom he at once declared suffering from a mild attack of varioloid, which, however, would not prevent his prosecution of the voyage. He said that he was the port physician, and that it would be his duty to report the case to the board of health. Fortunately I had said nothing at the hotel concerning my business, or my connection with the schooner, and I exacted a promise from Dr. Stone to say nothing about me. Not long after the departure of the Doctor we heard while sitting in the cabin a hail from the head of the wharf commanding the captain to haul at once into the stream and have no communication with the shore. A watchman was placed at the head of the wharf by the board of health, and I began to wonder how I was to escape a quarantine. I waited until after dark and then giving the captain directions to proceed to Boston with the first favorable wind, I went ashore, and sneaking up behind a store house with only the cap log of the wharf to walk on, I found an opening between two buildings about four feet wide, and came out on the street unobserved. As I walked to the hotel I found the town in a panic, and groups were standing here and there discussing the situation. I spoke to no one but on reaching the hotel gave orders to be called to take the six o’clock mail chaise, and went to bed. At six o’clock I was off and reached home the same day. It was eight days before my vessel was able to reach Boston, and thus I narrowly escaped a prolonged confinement on board, and the watchfulness of the Provincetown board of health. In view of my experience I advise my readers in visiting a town, to follow my example, and say nothing and keep open the avenues of retreat.