USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Nahant > Some annals of Nahant, Massachusetts > Part 5
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These three sons of Jonathan learned the shoemaker's trade with a half brother, Thomas Williams, serving an ap- prenticeship of seven years. Benjamin married Betsey Batchelder in 1795 and lived in Lynn. In 1798 Caleb married Olive Hartwell, daughter of Jacob Hartwell, who with his family used to visit Nahant. In 1814 Ward Hartwell, a brother of Olive, perished in attempting to cross Long Beach in a storm and after dark. He lost his bearings and drove into the surf. The children of Caleb and Olive Johnson were Mary, 1800; Welcome William, 1803; George L., 1806; Clara,
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1808; Edward Augustus, 1810; Caleb Hervey, 1812; Daniel W., 1815; Olive Cornelia, 1817; William Frederick, 1819; and Charles Warren, 1823. Caleb was a fisherman, owning an interest in one or more of the fleet sailing from Nahant. He went fishing for over fifty years, and served as captain on the "Dolphin," the "Jefferson" and the "Lafayette." After his retirement from active life he continued to own a share in one or more of the little fleet which had furnished his life occupation. He died in 1867.
The third Nahant son of Jonathan Johnson was Joseph, who was born in 1776 and died in 1854. He married first, in 1797, Mary Cox from a Salem family; and second, in 1819, Betsey Graves from a Reading family. For a few years after his first marriage he lived in Lynn, but soon returned to Nahant and built his house there. The children were Joseph, 1798; Jonathan, 1800; Francis, 1802; Eliza, 1806; Pamela, 1808; Washington Harlow, 1811; Dolly Madison, 1813; Walter, 1816; Daniel Alfred, 1820; Edwarde Kirke, 1822; Frederick Henry, 1825; Franklin Everett, 1827; Mary Graves, 1830; and Edmund Buxton, 1832.
Joseph Johnson was part farmer and part fisherman, while a little sign marked "J. Johnson" on a corner of his house signified it as one of the early small inns of the town. It was built soon after 1800, and was removed long since. The land was used by C. Hervey Johnson, a son of Caleb, on which to build two houses now standing on Nahant Road next westerly from the post office block, and on the same side. The old Johnson house was nearer the street than these and stood about midway of the present lot. A painting and an early photograph of his homestead are in the Nahant Public Library. In 1872 or 1873 it was moved back to Central Street and altered, so that it does not resemble the old Joseph Johnson house. It was the home of Welcome J. Johnson for many years and is now owned by James A. Coles. The homestead of Caleb Johnson, after so many years' service as the "cradle of the Johnson family," was torn down in 1896 to make room
Home of Frederic Tudor Later enlarged for the Nahant Club
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The "Old Castle" at Bass Point An early Nahant hotel
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for the Henry Sigourney house now across the street from the post office block. The house stood a little easterly from the Sigourney house. Many photographs of it are extant, and there is a painting in the Public Library. This house was standing so recently that many people not very old can well remember it.
CHAPTER V EARLY EIGHTEEN HUNDREDS
THE year 1800, by an interesting coincidence, finds the same three homes the only ones on Nahant, as have been mentioned for the year 1770, and they are occupied by sons of the earlier owners, - Nehemiah, son of Samuel Breed; Abner, son of Richard Hood; and Caleb, son of Jonathan Johnson. Caleb's father, Jonathan Johnson, had been dead about a year. Caleb's brother, Joseph, was living in Lynn, though soon to return to his native town. Just when he came back to Nahant seems indeterminate. E. J. Johnson says the old house dated back to 1812, while E. B. Johnson places it from 1800 to 1803, and says it was either the fourth or the fifth house on Nahant at that time.
The house which disputes the fourth place among Nahant houses of about this time was one at Bass Point, located about where Edward E. Strout's house stands today, owned by his heirs. Lewis says this house was built as a hotel by Captain Joseph Johnson of Lynn in 1800. Another writer says it was built in 1802. In 1803 it was burned and at once rebuilt. It was owned and operated at one time by Nathan Silsbee, and was used as a hotel until 1840, when Silsbee sold it into the family of John Phillips, who was the first mayor of Boston and father of Wendell Phillips. This is the building known to the present generation as the "Old Castle." It was used for a summer residence by two sons-in-law of Phillips, the Rev. George W. Blagden, pastor of the Old South Church in Boston, and Dr. Edward Reynolds, father of Dr. John P. Reynolds who lived for so many years on Nahant Road next to the village church. Two sons of Phillips, George W. Phillips and the Rev. John C. Phillips, built houses on portions
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of the Old Castle estate. This Joseph Johnson is sometimes confused with Joseph Johnson of the other and larger Johnson family of Nahant. The former was not even of the same Johnson kin, or at least not nearly enough related to be so recognized. He and his family disappeared from Nahant after Silsbee took over the property.
Thus has been traced the five houses on Nahant soon after the year 1800. Three have been torn down, - the "Old Castle," the Johnson Homestead and the Hood Homestead. The Joseph Johnson house has been moved and remodelled so that it has no outward resemblance to the house of over a century ago. The Breed house, now the Whitney Homestead, is where it always stood, and although it has been extensively enlarged and remodelled, it still remains in part the oldest house on Nahant. In the interior, old doors, cupboards, ceil- ing beams, door latches or other fittings show that parts now in useful existence reach back to these older times, doubtless to 1758, and probably to a still earlier time, as has been shown elsewhere in these "Annals." No further attempt will be made to give the respective ages of Nahant houses, although others that are around the century mark in age will come into mention in this narrative.
It is interesting to look again at the Nahant of this period. The town was barren of trees and presented a pleasant stretch of open land, cool and delightful in summer. Visitors had begun to come. Driving from Boston or other points, a stop was often made at Lynn, perhaps at a hotel in City Hall Square then much used for this purpose. Here at least people waited for a low tide, and then going down Nahant Street crossed the beach on the hard sand, picking up the old road at Little Nahant. This road, as a main road, wound round by Calf Spring, along what is now Spring Road, joining the present Nahant Road at Pond Street and continuing its present course as far as Bass Beach, where it dwindled to a cart path onward to the Ram Pasture. There it apparently turned and came back, running off down Willow Road as far as Boat House Beach, or Longfellow Beach. Just where these old cart paths
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went is vague, but there were no cross roads, only country lanes, unbuilt and ungraded. Castle Road meandered over to Bass Point, and Flash Road was a cart path connecting into it. All of the houses took in boarders or provided meals, often "cooking up" for good-sized parties. Nahant Road from Spring Road up over the steeper hill and onward to Pond Street soon came to full use, as both roads and vehicles were improved so that the hill was no obstacle. And so the nine- teenth century began for Nahant.
Any story of Nahant cannot pass far beyond the year 1800 without coming upon other men who had greatly to do with its development. One of these was Thomas Handasyd Per- kins, a wealthy Boston merchant, born in 1764 and died in 1854. For him is named the Perkins Institution for the Blind, of which he was the chief benefactor from its beginning in 1833. He was also a liberal helper of the Boston Athenæum and the Massachusetts General Hospital. He chiefly financed the old Granite Railroad in Quincy, one of the first useful railroads in the country. An interesting memoir of this man was written by his son-in-law, Thomas G. Cary. One incident related is of his presence in Paris in the fateful years of 1794 and 1795, when with James Munroe, later President, then Minister to Paris, he witnessed an entertainment by the guil- lotine, seeing sixteen persons beheaded in fourteen minutes. Under the date 1817 Lewis says "this year Hon. Thomas H. Perkins built the first stone cottage on Nahant." Miss Emma F. Cary, a granddaughter, once wrote that it was built about 1823. She says the stone was brought from Weymouth in a vessel in which the workmen lived while they were building the house. There was also a summer house, like a little rock temple, on the summit close to Spouting Horn, but this was struck by lightning and destroyed long ago. This property came into possession of Mrs. Thomas G. Cary, a daughter, and thence to grandchildren. Three of these were familiar to old Nahant, - Miss Emma F. Cary, whom many Na- hanters will remember; Mrs. Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, wife of Professor Louis Agassiz and President of Radcliffe College;
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and Mrs. Cornelius C. Felton, wife of Harvard College's President Felton. In 1821 Perkins and William Paine bought for $1,800 of Nehemiah Breed, elsewhere mentioned, all of the first range on Nahant, which was called the Ram Pasture. Other purchases were added to this until the tract comprised about what is now known as the Lodge and James places. These men apparently bought with the definite idea of building a hotel, and at once proceeded to get subscriptions for this purpose. In September, 1821, the "Columbian Centinel," one of the Boston newspapers of the time, carried a notice summoning all who were interested in the project to a meeting in Boston. The matter seems to have been delayed a little, but the new Nahant Hotel was opened in June, 1823. More about this hotel appears in this book elsewhere. There can be no doubt that Perkins had become a lover of Nahant, and believed a new and large hotel would fill a demand. Doubtless he also considered it a paying proposition. He was a leading Boston merchant, unlikely to enter upon merely chimerical schemes, for although a man may give time and energy to an enterprise merely for its benefit to the commu- nity, it rarely is for something usually satisfied by commercial activity.
Soon another figure appears in the person of Dr. Edward H. Robbins, who was actively interested in this new hotel. Dr. Robbins lived on what is now Swallows Cave Road, on the westerly side, owning the land lately owned by the Guild and Grant estates. The house set a little southerly from the Guild house.
Dr. Robbins was born in 1792, the son of Edward Hutchin- son Robbins and grandson of Nathaniel Robbins, the latter a prominent lawyer in Boston, member of the Committee on the Constitution of Massachusetts in 1780, and a member of the committee on building the "new" State House from 1795 to 1798. He was Lieutenant Governor from 1803 to 1807. He was a descendant of Ann Hutchinson who came to fame in Massachusetts with the early Antinomian controversy. Dr. Robbins was in the business of woolen manufacture, which
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was badly hurt financially by the general business depression in 1829. He died in 1850. The property was soon after sold to Charlotte Boardman Rice, widow of Henry G. Rice, who occupied it in the summer time until her death. In 1882 the house was torn down and two houses were built for her sons- in-law, Patrick Grant and Samuel E. Guild. Judge Robert Grant, well-known author and until recently Judge of the Probate Court for Suffolk County, is a son of Patrick Grant, and spent many summers of boyhood and manhood in these surroundings. He was born in 1852. The Grant house, close to the cliff's edge, was later sold to Dr. Francis P. Sprague, and is now occupied by Ralph Lowell, elsewhere mentioned. The Guild house remained in possession of the family until its sale in 1927.
Another man important to Nahant in these early days was William Wood, who has been described as an eccentric bachelor. He was born on Bunker Hill in Charlestown in 1777, a son of David Wood who owned a portion of the hill. After a long and useful life he died in Canandaigua, New York, in 1857. He was a prosperous Boston merchant, in partnership with his brother, with business interests in New York and London. His hobby for the greater period of his life was the formation of libraries. The old Apprentices Library of Boston was an early one that he originated. This was in 1820. Then fol- lowed the Mercantile Library Association of Boston and New York. He also founded libraries in Albany, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. In 1839 he started the Mercantile Library in Liverpool, England. He seems to have been especially in- terested in this work for the sake of young men, workmen, clerks and such. He also established libraries in prisons and poor houses, churches, steamboats, merchant ships; and after much exertion in Washington saw results in an order from the Navy Department "for every ship bound abroad to take a suitable number of volumes for the use of sailors." The Ap- prentices Library in Boston has been called the first which he founded, but it was in 1819 that he started a public library on Nahant, as is told elsewhere in these "Annals." There is no
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record that William Wood ever lived on Nahant. For about a score of years after 1800 no houses were built or owned by summer residents. The townspeople all took boarders or served dinners, and the natural beauties of the place were attracting much attention. Resort here for a day or a week, or even a month, in this sort of way leaves no trace easy to unravel a hundred years later. Laborious search through county records doubtless would yield some information. For the most part, what is known comes from other contemporary evidence, - in letters, newspapers and pamphlets, and from any family's knowledge of its own antecedents.
Another of the early Nahanters was Cornelius Coolidge, also impressed with the beauties of the town and giving time and energy to its development. In 1824 he bought from the Hoods and Breeds nearly all the land between Rice's Hotel and the Ram Pasture, or westward from what is now Swallows Cave Road as far as a goodly strip beyond what is now Cliff Street. He laid out streets and sixty or more house lots. The "Columbian Centinel" for February 19, 1812, carries this advertisement:
Cornelius Coolidge and Co., 53 Long Wharf. Now issuing from Sloop "Mary" and for sale, 70 hogsheads retailing molasses, 25 hogsheads high proof good flavored rum. From the sloop "Otho", 7 hogsheads retailing molasses, 13 ditto good flavored rum. .
Allen Chamberlain, in his "Beacon Hill," gives most of the following information. Coolidge was a Boston merchant, son of Cornelius Coolidge and son-in-law of Moses Grant. Boston Directories list him as a merchant from 1803 to 1821. In 1823 he is listed as an architect and later as a building con- tractor and real estate agent. Apparently he was a land specu- lator and builder, but not to be allied with speculative builders of today, for his work was sound and substantial, and his architecture had merit. A report by a committee of the common council of Boston in 1833, relating to certain land transactions by the city, states that Coolidge had been "re- duced from affluence to insolvency " as a result of the financial
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crisis of 1829. The report continues comment on this panic year and says that "many of our wealthiest families and citizens were ruined." Coolidge began building while still a merchant, but finally went wholly into the field of real estate development. He probably was the designer of fifty houses on Beacon Hill between the State House and Charles Street, besides many others elsewhere. By 1838 he seems to have regained somewhat his position in the business world, but at his death in 1843, at the age of sixty-five, he seems again to have lost, as he left no estate to be probated. He is buried in the family lot in the old Granary Burying Ground in Boston.
On Nahant Coolidge apparently planned more than he executed, although he was well started on his schemes. Re- cently the Public Library received, as a gift from Samuel Hammond, an original old notebook owned by Coolidge, which gives the early owners and "present" owners of all Nahant land west of Summer Street. This was the "great pasture," so named in other plans and deeds and other parcels, and it would indicate that this man had schemes evolving for the western part of Nahant that might have materialized but for his bad luck in 1829. He built the Bryant Cottage (now Paine), the Dr. Robbins (now gone), the David Sears (later Appleton, then Boyden, now Smith), the Hubbard (later Charles R. Green, burned in 1896), the B. C. Clark (later Amos A. Lawrence, now Arthur Perry), the N. P. Russell (later Miss Mary Russell, now gone), the Nahant House (later Peabody, now Fay), and the "Lodge Villa." The latter is said to be the last one of his ventures here, and is the near- est to its original condition of any of them. All of the others still standing have been remodelled out of any semblance to their originals, although in all of them, probably, there are parts of the old construction by Coolidge. This man is said to have met financial reverses again in the panic of 1837, the year which ended a boom of wildcat speculation and carried to ruin many not engaged in it. This boom and panic are de- scribed elsewhere, but this curious quotation is from a memo- randum kept with records of the Nahant Church. "He failed
The Witch House Stone lion still in his cave
The Maolis House, Ocean Street "Witch House" in background
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for want of capital and credit. New England was suffering under the democratic rule; a maxim attributed to Andrew Jackson, who was hated as no man has been hated since Jeffer- son, was that all who did business on borrowed capital ought to break. Perish credit, perish commerce, was another axiom. Till in 1837 a general bankruptcy swallowed up what little was left, happily including the democracy of that day." Coolidge was not through with his plans for Nahant and meant to do much more. He built the stone work, still stand- ing, around the "old wharf," lately known as the residence of Ellerton James, which was afterwards built there. He gave the land for the Nahant Church on Cliff Street, which was erected in 1832, but not the present structure, as is told else- where. In losing Cornelius Coolidge probably Nahant lost a very much worth-while friend. Inquiry does not elicit further information about him, but he disappears from Na- hant and none of his family or descendants belong to Nahant. Cliff Street, running southerly out to what is now Arthur Perry's estate, was called Coolidge Street and it stopped there. In his day only a cart way ran down the hill as Willow Road does today. Coolidge built his houses one after another and sold them. The exact dates or order of building is not given here, but it would be easy for any one interested to trace this out through the registry of deeds.
Another figure who appears in Nahant history at about this period is Frederic Tudor, who is probably the best known of all old Nahanters, though only by name to most. He was aggressive and eccentric, so that he has become a historic character of the town, the sort of whom many amusing and interesting stories can be told. His son, Frederic Tudor, writes of him as follows:
In the earliest years of the century a young man just entering mercantile life, looking around him with a beginner's enthusiasm for unthought-of and cheap commodities to carry to new and dear markets, lit upon the ice which in limitless fields clothed his native lakes in winter. Even at that time, well-to-do people housed a little ice for summer's use, and to him occurred the possibility of
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transporting this great absorbent of heat and producer of cold to tropical latitudes, where its value would be the greatest.
The substance was easily obtained, and to cut it into blocks convenient for handling cost very little. An uncertain but prob- ably large part would be lost by melting; would there be a residue after storage, transportation and handling which could be sold at such a price that all expenses would be paid and a profit left over? The young man who considered this project was Frederic Tudor, the third son of Colonel William Tudor, a Revolutionary officer and friend of General Washington, and a lawyer of eminence. Born in Boston September 4, 1783, he was scarcely twenty-one years of age when he began to ponder the scheme of a trade in ice, and he had so well satisfied himself of its feasibility that in 1805 a cargo of ice cut from a pond on his father's country place in Saugus was actually loaded on board a schooner, and, in charge of himself as owner and supercargo, was shipped to the island of Martinique.
The project, of which this was but an attempt, a bare opening of what he calculated would grow to be a great trade with the Indies, was laughed at by all his neighbors as a crazy undertaking.
He confessed that one reason for sailing along with his novel merchandise was to escape the jeers of his acquaintances and the well-meant restraint of his friends; but as such things have no weight with the man who is possessed by an idea and seriously in earnest in its development, his chief reason was undoubtedly to watch the effectiveness of his precautions to preserve the ice, and to introduce the new product to its first market in the tropics in person.
So unaccustomed were the residents of the island to the proper- ties of ice, and so unprepared to receive and use it, notwithstand- ing the efforts of his advance agents, that no real advantage was obtained from it, but the whole cargo arrived with trifling shrink- age, and the success of this most important part of the experiment was satisfactorily demonstrated.
From this time for many years his enthusiastic nature carried him forward, in spite of disasters, losses, accumulating debts and innumerable discouragements. He managed, in spite of his lack of money, even with a heavy load of debt which favoring fortune never lightened without soon involving him deeper by unexpected and improbable disasters, to steadily extend his business. For nearly twenty years his days and nights were spent in a continuous contest against adversity. In spite of innumerable reverses, which permitted only the slowest progress, he at last got his trade into a condition in which an ultimate reward of great profit was certain.
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His early youth had been largely spent upon his father's country place, "Rockwood" (now the Poor Farm of the town of Saugus) where the homestead is still standing. Here he and his brothers and sisters indulged their taste for gardening, farming and country life, and entered actively into the study of nature and the making of agricultural experiments. They kept a record of their doings, mainly in the hand of the boy Frederic, who even then seemed over- flowing with ideas and enthusiasm. Although he was the only one of four brothers who was not graduated from Harvard College, he had great fondness for letters and the company of cultivated people.
It was probably as a horticulturalist that he was best known to Essex and adjoining counties. Fond of the sea, he had, along with Colonel Perkins, Stephen Codman and others, been first to pitch upon that gem of the ocean, Nahant, recognizing its great charms as a summer resort. Originally a common belonging to the town of Lynn, and used from the earliest time as a pasture, the prom- ontory had been stripped of what must have been a crowning beauty, - its forest trees.
Tudor, who had now made Nahant his home, set about to restore this feature somewhat; and in addition to the extensive gardens which he laid out on his own grounds, located and built the public roads, and planted and cared for trees on their margins. The promontory, being so bold and high, offered no shelter from the merciless arctic winds of winter; the site was dry, bleak and most unpromising for experiments in horticulture. But it was his characteristic both to test the unknown and to accomplish the impossible.
As the essence of sport is the surmounting of obstacles, so with- out this stimulus perhaps his efforts as' a gardener would have failed to interest him. His success should be measured not only by results, which were considerable, but by the difficulties success- fully overcome and the permanent character of his improvements. During his life his garden was kept in the most advanced state of cultivation, the products frequently taking the highest prizes. The results were due to his own knowledge and care, assisted by such native Yankee talent as he could find about him. He never employed a trained and educated gardener. It was his pleasure that the community should enjoy free what had cost him so much. Admission to the gardens was always readily granted, and when the fruit was ripe, all the children of the town were invited to come with baskets, and to fill them during the day. Afterward they were entertained by a sumptuous collation.
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