chapter I
referred to the physical changes which it had undergone within my memory. I propose now to say something about the occupants of its houses. As far back as I can remember the building on the corner of Main and Leyden streets contained a store in the lower story on Main street, a large room or hall on the corner over the store, and a tenement with an entrance on Leyden street. The store was occupied as early as 1825 as a hardware store by James and Ephraim Spooner, who dissolved partnership in 1832, Ephraim continuing in the business. In 1839 John Washburn and William Rider Drew were established in the store in the same business. In 1846 Messrs. Washburn and Drew separated, the former taking a store on the west side of the street, and the latter establishing himself as has been stated in the building on Leyden street, which had been occupied by Steward and Alderman, and Alderman and Gooding. The store after Washburn & Drew left it was divided into two and the corner one was occupied at various times by Benjamin Swift in the watch and clock business, and Edward W. Atwood. The other was occupied by Edward Hathaway and Edward Bartlett, Reuben Peterson and Rich and Weston’s express. At a later time both stores were occupied by Weston’s express succeeded by their present occupant, the New York and Boston Despatch Express.
It is worthy of notice as showing one of the steps in the progress of the temperance movement that the Plymouth Temperance Society in 1825 placed in the hands of Ephraim Spooner a quantity of intoxicating liquors to be by him given without charge to persons presenting the written prescription of a physician. Mr. Spooner was appointed postmaster in 1840, and again in 1842, after an interval of one year, during which Joseph Lucas held the office. He died April 10, 1887.
The large room over the store was occupied as a school room in 1831 and 1832 by George Partridge Bradford, who taught a mixed school of boys and girls, of whom I was one, and by Wm. Whiting, also, as a school room in 1833. It was later used by private teachers, and often as political campaign headquarters. The tenement was in those days occupied by Oliver Wood, the father of the late Oliver T. and Isaac L. Wood.
Mr. Bradford was the son of Gamaliel Bradford of Boston, and graduated at Harvard in 1825. He prepared for the ministry, but never sought a settlement, devoting himself to the profession of a teacher. Concord was frequently his home, and he possessed that mental temperament which made him a congenial companion of Emerson and Alcott. He died in Cambridge in 1890 at the age of 80.
Mr. Whiting graduated at Harvard in 1833, and while preparing himself for the bar taught a school in Plymouth, and, like the teachers who had preceded him, George Washington Hosmer, William Parsons Lunt, William H. Lord, Isaac N. Stoddard, Nathaniel Bradstreet, Benjamin Shurtleff, Horace H. Rolfe and Josiah Moore, married a Plymouth wife. Charles Field another teacher, died while his marriage engagement to a Plymouth lady was pending. Mr. Whiting married Lydia Cushing, daughter of Thomas Russell, and became a distinguished leader at the Boston bar. Miss Rose S. Whiting of Plymouth is his daughter. During the Civil war he was for a time the solicitor of the War Department, and published a very able paper on “War Powers under the Constitution,” which was taken as a guide in many doubtful questions arising during the war. He died at his home in Roxbury, June 29, 1873.
The next one story building was occupied as far back as my memory goes by Thomas May as a shoe store. He occupied it until 1845, when Henry Howard Robbins took the store and occupied it as a hat store, and was succeeded by Harrison Finney, who occupied it many years for the sale of shoe kit and findings, until his death, July 27, 1878. Mr. Robbins died December 19, 1872.
The next store now occupied by Benjamin L. Bramhall, was before 1830 occupied by Ezra Collier, who kept a bookstore and circulating library. In 1829 he formed a partnership with William Sampson Bartlett, under the firm name of Collier and Bartlett, which was dissolved the next year. Mr. Collier came to Plymouth about 1820, and married in 1823 Mary, daughter of Thomas and Mehitable (Shaw) Atwood, and I think removed from town after the dissolution of his partnership.
Mr. Bartlett continued the business in the same store until 1840, when he moved into the store built by him now occupied by Finney’s pharmacy in the building owned by Dr. Benjamin Hubbard. Anthony Morse succeeded Mr. Bartlett, and occupied it for a grocery store. It was later occupied by Benjamin Bramhall for a short time, and by William L. Battles for a year, when it was again occupied by Mr. Bramhall, who was succeeded by his son, Benjamin L., its present occupant. Benjamin Bramhall died August 15, 1882.
The next store was occupied by Thomas and George Adams as a hat store from 1828 until the dissolution of their partnership in 1830. Thomas Adams continued the business until 1832, when he gave up business, and not long after was employed as a salesman in the hat store of Rhodes on the corner of Washington and Court streets in Boston. He was a son of Thomas and Mercy (Savery) Adams, and married Eunice H. Bugbee of Pomfret, Vermont. He was not open to the charge of promoting race suicide as the following record of his children shows, to wit: Mary E., born in 1832; Thomas H., 1834; Frederick E. and Frank W., twins, 1836; Luther B. and Ellen, twins, 1837; Miranda B., 1839; Harriet E., 1841; James O. and another twin, 1841; David B., 1845; Walter S. and another twin, 1848, Adelaide V., 1849.
George Adams, brother of Thomas, removed to Boston, and became the well known and successful founder of the Boston directory. He returned to Plymouth in 1846, and occupied the old store. He married in 1829 Hannah Sturtevant, daughter of Ephraim Harlow, and had George W., 1830, who married Mary Holland of Boston; Hannah, 1832, who married Dr. Edward A. Spooner of Philadelphia; Sarah S., 1840, and Theodore Parker, 1845, who married Ellen B., daughter of Joseph Cushman. He died October 4, 1865, at the age of fifty-eight.
In 1835 Henry Howard Robbins moved his hatter’s business to this store, and it was later occupied by John Perkins & Reuben Peterson, hatters, Weston & Atwood, clothiers, and Wm. F. Peterson and others.
My first recollection of the OLD COLONY MEMORIAL was when it was located in one or both rooms over the two stores just mentioned. James Thurber was then the publisher, and Benjamin Drew was one of the type setters. The paper was ready for the press by seven o’clock every Friday evening, and T remember well how much I enjoyed as a boy the permission to go to the office after supper and help fold the papers. The machine used in printing was the old Washington hand press which, tended by two men, could print one side at the rate of two or three hundred in an hour. Today a Hoe press is furnished with a roll of paper more than four miles long, and will print fifteen thousand complete newspapers in an hour.
The next store was in 1834, occupied by James G. Gleason as a barber’s shop, to which was attached a small room for the sale of soda and ice cream. Up to 1828 the barber shop of Jonathan Tufts, which stood on Church street, where the office of Jason W. Mixter, now stands, was the gathering place where the gossips of the town exchanged their news of the latest scandal. His shop had been for many years the place of deposit for curiosities which shipmasters collected in various parts of the world. Both the gossip and the curiosities were inherited by the Gleason shop, and finally descended to the shop of Isaac B. Rich and John T. Hall, Mr. Gleason’s successors.
Sometimes practical jokes were played in the shop more entertaining to the lookers on than to the victims. One of the habitues was William Bradford, a manufacturer of cotton bats, a man of humor, always ready to play a part in any prank. One day while Mr. Bradford was in the shop, Mr. Gleason went out on an errand and a countryman came in to be shaved. Bradford with a wink at the crowd said, “All right sir, your turn next, sit right down.” He gave the man a bountiful lather, and pulling off the towel said to him, “This is all we do in this department, you will have to go into the next shop to get your shave. When you go in don’t mind the old fellow in the front room, for he is a queer chap, a little off in his head, but go right through into the back room where they do the shaving.” Daniel Gale, the tailor, occupied the next shop, using the front room for cutting out work, and the back room for the sewing women. Mr. Gale was astonished, and so were the women, but when the angry countryman returned, Bradford had left, and Gleason had to bear the brunt of his mischief. Mr. Hall occupied the store until he purchased the Dr. Warren house on the west side of Main street, which he occupied until his death, September 21, 1885. Among those who have since occupied the store were, Mrs. Mary F. Campbell and Frederick L. Holmes.
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