William T. Davis

“ Living as I did on Cole’s Hill through my youth, I have a distinct recollection of Water street and its business as far back as 1832. During the summer I spent much of my time out of school hours sculling a boat, or climbing vessels’ rigging. At those times my special playmate was Winslow Whiting, who during the last years of his seafaring life commanded the bark Volant, and when the brig Hannah was in her berth on the north side of Hedge’s wharf we laughed at the boys crawling through the lubber hole, while we proudly mounted the futtock shrouds. ”

“ I know no family with more marked physical traits than the family of which he and Mrs. Goddard and Lemuel Simmons were conspicuous members. I have noticed these traits in other families in Plymouth, not always the same, sometimes in figure, sometimes in walk, and again in voice, in mould of features, and in ways of doing things. They are such that neither time nor marriage can extinguish, and any close observer may have seen them in the Jackson, Kendall, Warren, Russell, Spooner and Simmons families, and in the Perkins family of Newfields street. ”

“ In 1835 a by-law was adopted by the town of Plymouth, which I believe has never been repealed, forbidding smoking in any street, lane, public square or wharf within the town. I do not remember to have seen in all my boyhood any person smoking about the streets, or at his work. No ship carpenter in his yard, no rigger on the mast, no blacksmith at the forge, no digger in the garden or street, ever held a pipe in his mouth, wasting the time of his employer, in cutting tobacco, and filling his pipe. ”

“ A ship is now rarely seen, brigs have disappeared altogether, topsail schooners from Nova Scotia occasionally visit Boston, and the old packet sloops have lost the rosewood and bird’s eye maple of their cabins, and been degraded to uses of which they seem to be ashamed. Now and then I read on the stern of a weather beaten coal barge the name of a ship I knew in her prime, which seems to me like a wing clipped eagle no longer able to soar, or a disembodied spirit suffering for sins done in the body. ”

“ Simmons was an energetic man, taking advantage of every opportunity, running perhaps at times some risk, and making a trip to Boston and back, while the vessels of his prudent rivals lay in their berths. I remember seeing him leave the wharf one afternoon at sunset with a full load of hollow ware from the Federal furnace, and finding her the next morning but one, when I looked out of my window at Cole’s Hill, lying in her berth with a full load of hemp for the Plymouth Cordage Company. ”

“ I went to Boston, and, knowing that it would be useless to apply at any bank, went to see Mr. Ebenezer Francis, living in Pemberton Square, who with Abbot Lawrence, Robert G. Shaw and Peter C. Brooks, were the only persons in Boston rated at a million, while now you can’t turn a corner without running against a millionaire. “No, Mr. Davis, I cannot loan the money to the county,” Mr. Francis said in answer to my application. “I am a poor man. I have one hundred thousand dollars lying in the old Boston bank, drawing no interest.” ”

“ In recalling that summer afternoon at East Boston, I have thought that the voices of the past, not the voice of this man or that, performing his part in the drama of life, but the voices of all good and great men who have lived and died need time and distance to be blended as a harmonious whole in the grand symphony of civilization. ”

“ Unlike France, where no man can cut down the forests on his own land without a government permit, we of the present generation in the United States are absolutely skinning the earth, as if future generations have no rights which we are bound to respect. If seventy years ago a law had been enacted requiring an acre of black walnut to be planted with so many trees to the acre, for every acre cut down, that wood would have continued in reasonably abundant supply. Unless some restraining laws be soon enacted to control the robbers of our forests, a lumber famine must sooner or later ensue. ”

“ If an X ray could penetrate the sub-surface of the Back Bay, it would disclose thousands of piles with a composite between, of old hats, bonnets, shoes, hoop skirts and tomato cans on which stand the domiciles of wealth and fashion. Perhaps, however, such a foundation is as genuine and real as that on which stands fashion itself. In my youth the South Bay, east of Washington street, was open to the harbor through Fort Point channel, only obstructed by the Dover street, and the old South Boston bridges. ”

“ Without gas or kerosene oil, and with wood for fuel, we could have still enjoyed life, though it be without present conveniences, comforts and luxury. Without railroads it is not too much to say that it would have been impossible to dispose of, and assimilate that vast immigration which during the last seventy years has sought a resting place in our land. It may also be said that the railroad system, which broke through the wall that separated the old Union from California, prevented the establishment of a new and distinct empire on the Pacific coast. ”

“ On the south side of Court square on the corner of School street, there lived until 1839 a worthy old man, who for some years was stone blind. He was Joseph Barnes, the great-grandfather of our townsman, bearing the same name. He carried, extended out in front of him, a staff about eight feet long, with which he tapped the sidewalk constantly, and directed his steps without any other guide or support. It was his privilege to live in days when bicycles, automobiles and trolley cars had not been invented to endanger the lives of even the far-seeing and wary. ”

“ There is something absurd about this so-called republican simplicity, which compels a representative of our government to appear at foreign courts in the garb of an American citizen, while he has his residence in one of the most lordly houses in London, and makes it the vogue for a bridegroom to appear at his wedding with nothing but the color of his skin to distinguish him from the colored waiter, while he sets up a livery and hunts through Herald’s college for a coat of arms to have painted on the door of his carriage. ”

“ An account of the chief incidents in his career I had from his own lips. He was a native of Maine, and came to Plymouth in 1845, and established himself in the practice of medicine. He was a man six feet in height and large in proportion, frank and honest in speech, hearty, but rough in manner, possessing great will and energy, and calculated in every way to win the confidence of the people. He was a bachelor, and at first had an office on Main street, in the Bartlett building, where Loring’s watchmaker’s shop now is. ”

“ Some such motive, we doubt not, moved one or two of our natural and experimental philosophers to get up the project of a railroad from Boston to Albany; a project which every one knows, who knows the simplest rules in arithmetic to be impracticable but at an expense a little less than the market value of the whole territory of Massachusetts, and which if practicable, every person of common sense knows would be as useless as a railroad from Boston to the moon. ”

“ The whaling and fishing industries were active and prosperous and Boston had not yet drawn away from Plymouth any considerable portion of its foreign trade. Molasses and sugar from the West India Islands, salt from Turks Island and Cadiz, and iron from Gothenberg, continued to come in, the last free of that burdensome duty, which has destroyed the iron industries of the old colony. I can hear today the rattling of the bars which Stephen Thomas and others carted through our streets to the various manufactories established in Plymouth, Carver, Wareham, Plympton and Kingston. ”

“ In a modest house a little beyond the North end grocery on the east side of the street there lived for many years one of the uncles of the town. Every town has its uncles, and wherever you find them they are sterling, upright men, who have a kindly and affectionate word for and from everybody. Peter Holmes was the man known only as Uncle Peter, a shipmaster in his early days who sailed for my grandfather, and whose letters written from foreign ports, which I have read, show him to have been skilful and trusted in his profession. ”

“ During my youth, public entertainments were rare in Plymouth, especially in the winter. During that season, with unlighted streets and the houses lighted for the most part with oil lamps, the town, more particularly in a storm of rain or snow was gloomy, indeed. Families gathered around their wood fires and here and there groups of men would sit on the counters and boxes in the stores until the nine o’clock bell called them home. ”

“ In the flowers and fruits and trees of Plymouth the changes in my day have not been striking. The garden flora are the same as in my youth, except that new flowers have been introduced, and new and improved varieties of the old ones. Fashion has occasionally relegated some flowers to temporary obscurity, but in many instances has restored them to their old rank or to a higher one. ”

“ All the while the cost of lumber is increasing. Within seventy years black walnut, before unknown as a furniture wood, has been so nearly exhausted as to bring in the Boston market one hundred dollars a thousand. Our legislators in Washington in their fear of the lumber barons of Michigan and Maine, who have even sent their invading axes into the mountains of New Hampshire and the forests of the Adirondacks, refuse to bring about even the slight amelioration of present conditions, which by the abolition of a duty on lumber, might be afforded by giving us access to the forests of the Dominion. ”

“ We are spending hundreds of dollars each year in spraying their foliage to check the ravages of the beetle and miller, and at the same time by grass and concrete and macadamizing sentencing them to certain death. I commend the subject to the Plymouth Natural History Society, who on examination of the beautiful tree in the front of the new fire station, a central jewel in our coronet of trees, will find that we have been pursuing the policy of a physician who would treat a patient for loss of hair, who is dying of hunger and thirst. ”

“ I remember him in the front east room on a chilly day sitting by a Franklin stove, and often in the garden, which he tended with loving and faithful care. There was a vein of humor in his composition, which, unlike that I have often seen repressed on the Sabbath by ministers of the olden time, was too much the overflow of a contented and joyful spirit to be concealed on a day to him the happiest of the week. As long as I can remember he always carried a cane, which had descended to him through James, his father, James, his grandfather, and Samuel, his great-grandfather ”

“ When in their seasons the robins build their nests, and the blackbirds gather in flocks preparatory to their autumn flight, we are content with the statement that they are guided by instinct. But we have no answer to the question—why we boys, as if in obedience to a mysterious edict issued by a secret council, each year simultaneously in all our towns brought from their winter quarters our alleys and taws, and snapped our marbles on every available sidewalk. ”

“ It is singular that the spirit of invention and enterprise, which New England has displayed in the advance of civilization, should have been apparently indifferent in the development of steam navigation. It is true that her activities have been fully exerted in other directions, and that, as necessity is the mother of invention, the requirements of her manufacturing industries have demanded to the fullest extent the display of her genius. ”

“ The complaint of a sluggish condition of our commerce is based on the fact that our foreign trade is largely in the hands of aliens. Some seek a remedy in subsidy to American ships, but the question may be asked whether it will not be well, before taking a subsidy out of the treasury, a large portion of which will find its way into the pockets of the steel barons of Pennsylvania, to try the simpler remedy of taking the duty from coal and iron, and compelling manufacturers to sell at home structural steel used in building ships at prices as low as they sell to foreign ship builders. ”

“ The migration from New England and the middle states to California in 1849 and 1850, was one of the remarkable events in the history of the American Union. It was one of those events, of which the history of the world furnishes many examples, accomplishing in the end results far removed from the purposes sought in their conception, and apparently carrying out the designs of an overruling providence, in which man has only served as its instrument. ”

“ The occupant of the next house from 1828 to 1837 was Daniel Gale, a tailor whose shop on the other side of Main street has been already mentioned. He was a son of Noah and Rebecca Gale, but where he was born and when, I do not know. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Winslow of Duxbury, and probably about 1837 moved away from Plymouth, as I find no record of his death. Like all men in his line of business in localities too small for keeping an assortment of cloth, he was only a tailor, and not a draper. ”

“ Lemuel and William, the father and uncle of the subject of this notice were engaged many years in the grand bank fishery, and Stephens’ wharf, which since the abandonment of the fishery has gradually crumbled away, presented once a busy scene when the Jane and Constitution and the Duck and the Industry were fitting out in the spring, and washing out in the autumn. The Stephens brothers were men of brains, and consequently men of ideas, men who were called pessimists because they looked out for weak spots in government and society, and sought to correct them. ”

“ I remember the various lines of stages running every day into and out of Boston, and I can say that no better horses or better drivers could be seen than those on the Plymouth line. There were in Boston various stage houses, Wilde’s on Elm street, Doolittle’s City tavern on Brattle street, the Washington House on Washington street, and others. The Plymouth stage office was in the City Tavern on Brattle street, and there orders were left for calls by the stage for passengers. The business on the line was good, and extra stages were frequently required to meet the demand. ”

“ The great bee, which was celebrated all over the corn growing parts of our country in olden times, was the husking bee, not the sham frolic of present days when, like the fox bought in a bag by Newport hunters, a load of corn on the stalk is bought for the occasion and piled on a floor glistening under electric lights, but the genuine husking frolic in a barn of ample proportions, where piles of pumpkins furnished the decorations, and cornstalk fiddles enlivened the scene. ”

“ Kendall, whose pastorate extended through a period of sixty years, I cannot forbear to speak, as his life was one of the most important passages in the history of our town. It is difficult to realize that more than a generation has been born, and has lived to nearly middle age, without a knowledge of his personality and a daily observation of his character and virtues. He was born in Sterling, Mass., in 1769, and after graduating at Harvard in 1796, occupied the position of tutor in Latin at Harvard until he received an invitation to settle in Plymouth. ”