After the death of Dr. Rossiter Cotton in 1837, and the return of his son to Newport, the house in question was kept as a hotel named the Mansion House for some years by James G. Gleason, succeeded by Benjamin H. Crandon and N. M. Perry. In still later years the post office occupied the corner room down stairs for a time, and the Custom House a room upstairs, until finally the whole upper part of the building and the northerly and easterly part below were occupied by newspaper offices, and the corner by Charles P. Morse for a drug store, until the building was taken down in 1888. Since the mention of N. M. Perry in a previous chapter, I have learned that he was a native of Holliston.
There are several estates on the west side of Court street, whose occupants have not been noticed. Opposite the head of North street there was in my youth the Lothrop estate, on which a house stood, which was occupied by Dr. Nathaniel Lothrop, until his death, October 10, 1828. Dr. Lothrop was the son of Isaac and Priscilla (Thomas) (Watson) Lothrop, and was born in the house in question in 1737. His mother married in 1758, Noah Hobart of Fairfield, Connecticut, who had a daughter Ellen by a previous wife. This daughter, Ellen Hobart, married Nathaniel Lothrop, and thus Nathaniel Lothrop married his mother’s step-daughter, and Ellen Hobart married her father’s step-son. I leave my readers to determine the relationship between them. In 1831 the Lothrop house was taken down, and while its demolition was going on, I a boy of nine years of age, saw quantities of papers thrown out of the garret windows, and picking up many of them carried them home. I found them on examination to be official papers with autographs bearing date from 1675 to 1700. These I arranged in an album, and have recently presented them to the Pilgrim Society. In 1832 the northerly part of the lot was sold to Jacob H. Loud, who built the house now owned and occupied by Mrs. Francis B. Davis.
The southerly part of the lot was sold in 1839 to Nathaniel Russell, Jr., who built the house now occupied by Col. William P. Stoddard, and occupied it until his father’s death in 1852, when he moved into the brick house on the corner of Court Square, which had been his father’s home. At his removal the house was left furnished, and was occupied during the summer of 1853 by Richard Warren and family of New York. From the autumn of 1853 to the autumn of 1854, the house was occupied by myself, and there in the summer of 1854 my oldest child was born. Not long after I left the house, it was occupied by Rev. George S. Ball, during his pastorate as colleague of Rev. Dr. Kendall. In 1857 the house was sold to Jeremiah Farris, whose son-in-law, Col. Stoddard, now occupies it.
Mr. Russell was as has been before stated, the son of Nathaniel and Martha (LeBaron) Russell, and was born in Bridgewater, December 18, 1801. He graduated at Harvard in 1820, and married, June 25, 1827, Catherine Elizabeth, daughter of Daniel Robert and Betsey Hayward (Thacher) Elliott of Savannah, Georgia, and died February 16, 1875. Until 1837 he was associated with his father in the management of the iron industries belonging to the firm of N. Russell & Co., composed of Nathaniel Russell, William Davis and Barnabas Hedge. After the retirement of the Davis and Hedge interests from the firm, Mr. Russell became a member of the firm of N. Russell & Co., and so continued until the death of his father, October 21, 1852, after which he continued the business until the sale of the Summer street works in 1866 to the Robinson Iron Co.
During the exciting period of anti-masonry which extended from 1828 to 1835, an anti-masonic political party sprang up in many of the Northern states, and candidates were generally nominated for State and National offices. The party had its origin in the belief that William Morgan of Batavia, New York, a former mason, who was reported to intend publishing the secrets of the order of free masons, had been kidnapped and drowned in Lake Ontario. It was believed that the masonic oath disqualified those in the higher degrees from serving as jurors in cases where members of the same degrees were parties. The anti-masonic party originated in New York in 1828, and in 1830 Francis Granger, its candidate for Governor, received 128,000 votes. In 1831 a National Anti-masonic convention nominated William Wirt of Maryland, and Amos Ellmaker of Pennsylvania, for President and Vice-President. Vermont was the only state which threw its electoral vote for the anti-masonic candidates. The anti-masonic excitement reached Plymouth, and for one or more years Mr. Russell was chosen a member of the legislature on the anti-masonic ticket. I am not a mason, but as a somewhat close observer of public affairs for nearly seventy years, and many times a successful candidate for public office, I feel bound to say that I have never suspected any masonic participation either collectively or individually in the selection of nominees to office, or the election of candidates.
In 1840 after the death of Barnabas Hedge, Mr. Russell was chosen to succeed him as President of the Plymouth Institution for Savings, which was incorporated in 1828, and continued in office until his death. In 1847, during his incumbency, the name of the institution was changed to the Plymouth Savings Bank.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The house in North street occupied by Dr. Brown, stands on the site of a house, which in my youth, was owned and occupied by Stephen Marcy. The old house was during the revolution kept as an Inn by Thomas Southworth Howland, and there on December 22, 1769, the Old Colony Club for the first time celebrated the anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. On that occasion at half-past two a dinner composed of the following dishes was served: “A large baked Indian whortleberry pudding, a dish of sauquetach, a dish of clams, a dish of oysters, and a dish of cod fish, a haunch of venison, a dish of sea fowl, a dish of frost fish and eels, an apple pie, a course of cranberry tarts and cheese.”
The pudding alone preceded the meat, and the dessert was as now the last course. This custom went out before my day, but it was no more strange than that now in vogue, of beginning a breakfast with fruit and oatmeal.
I remember the house well with a front door near its westerly end, and an office door near its easterly end opening into a room which in its last days was occupied by Dr. Robert Capen. In 1833 Jacob Covington bought the estate and built the house now standing.