Plymouth memories of an octogenarian

by William T. Davis

After Dr. Gordon, the house under consideration was successively occupied by Rev. A. H. Sweetser, pastor of the Universalist Society, and by Dr. Parker, and the last occupant before Mr. Lord, its present occupant, was Dr. Warren Pierce.

Perhaps I ought to offer an excuse, for the continuance of these personal reminiscences which may have become wearisome to some of my readers. There is a legend that myriads of sombre birds have periodically flown from the Black Sea to the beautiful sea of Marmora, and after hovering over the cypress shades of the cemetery at Scutari have retraced their flight without food or drink, never touching the earth. The Turks are said to believe that they are condemned souls denied the peaceful quiet of the grave, visiting the tombs of others. I trust that my wanderings among the scenes of the past will not be attributed to the restlessness of a condemned soul, but rather to a love of my native town, and of those in whose footsteps I am daily walking, and in whose vacant homes I recall blessed memories.

The house on North street, now owned by John Russell, the occupants of which have been only incidentally alluded to, was built by Samuel Jackson soon after the revolution and passed from him to John Russell, who married his daughter Mary. From John Russell it passed to his son, John, who owned and occupied it through my boyhood until his death in 1857, from whom after his widow’s death it passed to his son, John Jackson Russell, the father of the present owner. John Russell, whom I remember as the occupant of the house, was the son of John and Mary (Jackson) Russell, and was born in 1786. In early life he followed the sea, and soon became master. He sailed some years in the employ of my grandfather, Wm. Davis, and I have seen many letters from him in various ports in the North of Europe, which show him to have been a skilful navigator, and an intelligent, shrewd business man. He gave up the sea before my day, and jointly with Thomas Davis of Plymouth, and Wm. Perkins and Sydney Bartlett of Boston, owned the ships Massasoit, Sydney, Granada and Hampden, of which he was manager. As far as I know his masters were Robert Cowen, Nathaniel Spooner, Wm. Sylvester, and Henry Whiting, the latter making a single voyage to California in the Hampden in 1849. Not long after giving up the sea he became interested in town affairs, and could always be relied on to oppose extravagant measures. He was a member of the Board of Selectmen from 1841 to 1844 inclusive, and in the years 1846, 1851, 1853 and 1854. He was also one of the corporators of the Plymouth Cordage Company in 1824, and a director I think until his death. It was during his service as shipmaster that the political lines began to be drawn between the advocates and opponents of a protective tariff, the manufacturers asking for protection, and the ship owners opposing any measures tending to check importations. His attitude on this question carried him into the ranks of the Democratic party a constant opponent of a tariff which, drawn chiefly for protection purposes, he believed to be unconstitutional. In 1844 the ship Hampden was in New Orleans loading cotton for Amsterdam, and either for the benefit of his health or the relief of Capt. Cowen, he concluded to take command of her for the voyage. Sending for his son John, who was teaching school in Barnstable to be his companion, they joined the ship and made the voyage to Amsterdam and back to Boston or New York, I think with a load of iron.

Captain Russell married in 1816 Deborah, daughter of Nathaniel and Mary (Holmes) Spooner, and had Mary Spooner, who married James T. Hodge, John Jackson, Helen, who married Wm. Davis and Wm. H. Whitman, and Laura. He died February 6, 1857.

John Jackson Russell, son of the above, who became the next occupant of the house in question, was born July 27, 1823, and graduated at Harvard in 1843. After teaching school in Barnstable and making a voyage to Amsterdam with his father in the ship Hampden in 1844, he studied law with Jacob H. Loud in Plymouth, and Allen Crocker Spooner in Boston, and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1848. Returning to Plymouth in 1850, after practising law for a time, he was appointed Assistant Treasurer of the Plymouth Savings Bank, and after the death of Allen Danforth in 1872 treasurer, which position he held until his death. He was also a director of the Plymouth National Bank, and in 1878, a short time its President. He married in 1855 Mary A., daughter of Allen Danforth, and had Helen, 1857, John, 1860, and Lydia, 1863. He died November 10, 1897. The house in question in my judgment illustrates those admirable qualities in architecture, symmetry and proportion, which are rarely found in the works of architects of the present day. It illustrates also the importance of retaining the original color of a house intended by the architect to be built of brick in order to preserve its symmetry, for it must be apparent that since the house was painted red the symmetry has been restored, which a light color had previously disturbed.

Until within five or six years a house stood on the easterly side of the Russell house, which during my boyhood was occupied by Daniel Jackson until 1834, and by Isaac Tribble until 1846, both of whom have already been noticed. In 1846 it was bought by Anthony Morse, who occupied it until his death. Mr. Morse was born in Gloucester in 1795, and was the son of Humphrey and Lydia (Parsons) Morse of that city. He came to Plymouth when a young man, and learned the trade of rope making, working a number of years in the rope walk extending from the gardens of the North street houses along the rear of the Court street lots to Howland street, and afterwards in the works of the Robbins Cordage Company. At a later time he was an assistant in the store of Samuel Robbins on Market street, and still later he kept a grocery store a short time on his own account. He was an ardent whig, and during political campaigns he rendered valuable service to his party by setting up a reading room, collecting campaign funds, and making sure of the appearance of whig voters at the polls. Colonel John B. Thomas was the general adviser of the party, and no measures were adopted without his approval. One election morning Col. Thomas was awaked before daylight by a loud rapping at his door. Opening the window and asking what was the matter, Morse appeared out of the darkness and called out, “C-Co-Colonel, rains like h-hell, shall I engage all the h-horses?” The Colonel said Yes, and went back to bed. As a reward for his party services he was appointed Deputy Collector in 1841. Mr. Morse married in 1837 Nancy, widow of Branch Johnson, and daughter of William Atwood, and had Charles P., 1830, who kept an apothecary’s shop some years at the corner of Court and North streets, and later in the house of his father, to which he succeeded.

Mr. Morse was a man of the strictest integrity, and conscientiousness was the most marked feature in his character. He possessed a morbid conscience which kept him in constant fear that he might be suspected of dishonesty. He was a director of the Plymouth Bank from 1844 to 1858, and he told me once that on one occasion when the cashier left him during a temporary absence to keep the Bank he found a twenty dollar bill behind a chair on the floor. I found it impossible to convince him that it had not been placed there to test his honesty. The morbid state of his mind intensified with age, and he committed suicide April 19, 1858.

Passing now to the house standing in the angle of Winslow street, I am led to speak of its occupants for the purpose of making appropriate mention of Dr. Charles T. Jackson, a distinguished son of Plymouth, who was there born June 21, 1805. His father, Charles Jackson, married Lucy, daughter of John Cotton, in 1794, and his children, whom I remember, were Lucy, born, 1798, who married Charles Brown, Lydia, 1802, who married Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Charles Thomas. Mr. Brown, the husband of Lucy, lived many years in Constantinople, and rendered laborious and self-sacrificing service to the sick during a visitation of the plague in that city. Dr. Jackson studied medicine with Dr. James Jackson and Dr. Walter Channing of Boston, and graduated at the Harvard Medical school in 1829. In the same year he went to Europe, where he remained three years studying in Paris, and returned in 1832. For his scientific labors and researches he was made a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 1836 he was appointed geologist of Maine, and was also appointed by Massachusetts to survey her Maine lands. In 1839 he was appointed geologist of Rhode Island, and in 1840 of New Hampshire. In 1844 and 1845, explored the southern shores of Lake Superior, and opened mines of copper. In 1847 he superintended for a time a survey of mineral lands of the United States in Michigan. When Professor S. F. B. Morse secured a patent for the telegraph in 1840, Dr. Jackson claimed that on board the ship Sully in 1832, in which he and Morse were passengers, he suggested the possibility of correspondence by means of electricity, and explained to Mr. Morse the method of applying electricity to telegraphic use. It is in my power to furnish to a certain extent a confirmation of Dr. Jackson’s claim, which, as far as I know, has not found its way into the literature of the telegraph. In 1846 I was a passenger from New York to Liverpool in the ship Liverpool, in which a man by the name of Blithen was mate, who was also mate of the ship Sully, in which Jackson and Morse were passengers in 1832. He told me that he remembered well when Dr. Jackson made the suggestion of the possibility of an electric telegraph, at the dinner table, and the interest with which Mr. Morse listened, and his questionings concerning a possible use of electricity in the manner proposed. Mr. Blithen said that it was evident that the subject was a new one to Mr. Morse, bearing on matters entirely outside of the profession of painter to which he belonged. The controversy upon the respective claims of Morse and Jackson never reached a definite settlement, except sub-silentia by public opinion in favor of Morse.

Dr. Jackson made another claim, resting on a more substantial basis, on which both scientific and general opinion have been and probably always will be divided. The question whether he or Dr. W. T. G. Morton was the real discoverer of anasthesia, will never be settled, and perhaps the only solution it will reach is that which gives both jointly the credit of the great discovery. A memorial was presented to Congress in 1852, signed by one hundred and forty-three physicians of Boston and vicinity, ascribing the discovery exclusively to Dr. Jackson. The French Academy of Science decreed a Montyon prize of 2,500 francs to Jackson for the discovery of etherization, and one of the same amount to Morton for the application of the discovery to surgical operations. Dr. Jackson received orders and decorations from the governments of France, Sweden, Prussia, Turkey and Sardinia, but what the final verdict of history, the court of last resort, will be, it is too early to say.