USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Plymouth > Twenty decades in Plymouth, New Hampsire : 1763-1963 > Part 9
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For their living-rooms, many possessed soap stone stoves. Inch thick slabs of this stone were set into an iron framework with a hinged top that lifted to admit a chunk of hard wood into its two feet square interior. Once heated, this remained so throughout the winter.
But the railroad soon brought carloads of coal. Mr. Huckins changed his business to furniture in the Kidder Block with fire insurance as an extra side line.
Coal as a kitchen fuel did not meet with immediate favor with the house- wives. When they did accept it for winter, they removed the brick linings of the fireboxes and returned to wood in the summer months.
The evolution of the kitchen stove after the fireplaces were out-of-date is difficult to describe. The first iron cook stoves were two feet square, set upon four short legs, with two or four round openings in the top that were filled with covers that could be removed to place fuel in the front firebox or for setting kettles directly over the fire. The oven was above and in back of this stove, resting on the top edge with two long legs for supports at the back. This was an oblong iron box around the stove pipe with doors on either side. This resembled a flight of steps: from the top of the oven to the top of the stove, to the front hearth, to the floor.
Ten years later appeared the same stove, set higher with the oven under-
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neath the firebox, a better baker but low for the housewife to use the oven. Lastly, came the six cover range with the hot water tank on the rear, still in use today.
SUMMARY
This decade enjoyed musical societies, Keniston's Brass Band, the Bul- finch Bandstand, the Universalist church, a Davis Keniston drygoods store, the Plymouth Electric Light Company, the veneer mill, the beginning of the Plymouth Record, the Village Common, the Fox and Mason stores, the development of fraternal organizations, the Plymouth Guaranty Savings Bank and the first coal dealer.
Miss Miriam E. Keniston mod- elling the 1856 wedding gown of Mrs. Cyrus Keniston.
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1893-1903
EMILY BALCH COTTAGE HOSPITAL
The rapidly increasing skills in the medical profession and the profes- sional nurse created a widespread demand for hospitals. From a small be- ginning in 1892, by the determination of a few women, a hospital opened in Plymouth.
In Holderness on the terrace opposite the Holderness School, "Wood- lands," the beautiful estate of the Balch Family of English lineage, stood until it was destroyed by fire in 1910. Here lived Miss Catherine Holmes Balch, a young woman who originated the idea that a place must be pro- vided for the ill.
With the enthusiasm that she generated among a few women of Plym- outh, a fund of $700.00 was earned or solicited that engaged a room in the home of Mrs. Caleb Ames, on the road to Pulsifer Hill in Holderness, where several patients were treated in 1896.
With persistence, these women and six courageous men incorporated the Emily Balch Cottage Hospital Association, named for the mother of Miss Catherine, in 1899. With a gift of $500.00 from Mr. and Mrs. J. Randolph Coolidge of Sandwich added to the first $700.00, a house was purchased with this down payment and a $900.00 mortgage. This is the house that remains at 47 Highland street today.
The upper floor was renovated to furnish the two front rooms for a men's ward and a women's ward. The kitchen became the operating room and the pantry a drug room. There was a small room for the resident nurse, a small waiting room, a drug room in the shed, and a staircase from the ground for an entrance.
One trained nurse, Miss Jones, was employed, with duties of twenty- four hours to care for the ill if in the hospital or to be a District Nurse for outside cases. The first six months she cared for four patients in the hospital, five outside, and made calls on six cases. Miss Jones resigned frequently, then at the entreaty of a persuasive trustee, she stayed about two years. She did not have the use of a telephone or electric lights and the supplies de- pended upon gifts at donation days and the generosity of citizens. Her only
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assistants were neighborhood women in the waiting room; not even a cleaning maid eased her burdens.
To appreciate conditions sixty years ago, the story about an operation will cause astonishment today when antiseptics and tranquilizers are necessi- ties.
Young Bessie Fox, about sixteen years of age, was in the waiting room while the nurse was assisting in the operating room where an abdominal tumor was being removed from an aged patient. The case was prolonged beyond expectation. The surgeon called for ether and through a sliding window di- rected Miss Fox to search on the top shelf of the drug room. She found the ether, then was summoned to bring a kerosene lamp into the operating room, and to hold the lighted lamp above the patient. "What if I faint?" asked Bessie. Thundered the surgeon, "You cannot faint." She was cautioned that ether was inflammable, yet as the darkness increased, she was ordered to hold the lamp closer to the patient.
When the ordeal was over and the patient removed from the room, the nurse collapsed. Miss Bessie mopped the floor and cleared up the utensils, then staggered home to Russell street. Plummer Fox was thoroughly angered to learn that his young daughter was subjected to this terrific endurance test. The patient recovered to live longer in Campton.
Such were the problems of the Association. Then a new element caused more trials. A young, capable graduate of the Dartmouth Medical College, Dr. Ernest L. Bell from North Woodstock, opened his own hospital in a house at 65 Highland street, in 1904. Such was the situation at the close of this decade.
THE ROLLINS BUILDING
In 1893, Mr. Frank H. Rollins erected the building that still bears his name, on Main street opposite the Common. The ten-footers that occupied the site were removed to the north side of Bridge street where they remain in 1963.
Mr. Rollins was born in Ashland, was graduated from the Normal School in 1872 and at Tilton Seminary. He removed to Philadelphia to engage in the insurance business with his brother, then went to Chicago. In failing health, he returned to Plymouth to continue his insurance work and enter glove manufacturing.
One store on the lower floor of his building was occupied by his furniture business; the other by the fruit store of Mr. Gaspar Borella, a native of Italy. This was the period when oranges were coming to this country by
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shiploads and the banana groves in the West Indies were producing quanti- ties of bunches for the trade in the U.S.A.
Mr. Borella used the translation of his name, Police, in his business. In 1903 he and his wife and six children visited Italy for the winter. A son, Ben V., who was born in Plymouth in 1891, was graduated with honors in 1915 at Dartmouth. He became General Assistant Treasurer of General Motors Corporation in New York City. A son, Victor Gaspar, born in Plymouth in 1906, was graduated at Dartmouth in 1930 and is now Director of Industrial Relations at Rockefeller Center in New York City.
Although under the name of another family, the Volpes, this store has promoted the trade in fruit through seven decades in the Rollins Block.
Successors to Mr. Borella in the fruit business were the brothers, Daniel and Charles Volpe, members of the Volpe Family who were famous fruit im- porters at Winchester, Massachusetts. The quality of their merchandise was known far and wide over a radius of fifty miles. Mr. Daniel Volpe began a second store in a new block about 1936 that he conducted until illness com- pelled him to retire. Mr. Charles Volpe removed to Holly Hill, Florida, leav- ing his son, Angelo, in Plymouth, a graduate of New Hampshire University and an expert in radios. The son of Daniel Volpe, Paul, is a successful lawyer in Rhode Island.
Mrs. Henry William Blair
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THE PEMIGEWASSET WOMAN'S CLUB
During the Civil War women learned to work together in the Sanitary Commission. Next, temperance, suffrage and education influenced them to continue to seek for activities that promoted community betterment.
Several groups in New Hampshire caught the spirit of a group in New York with the idea of a woman's club, around 1893. One of the leaders was Mrs. Henry W. Blair, native of Plymouth, then residing in Manchester, who was the wife of the United States senator. These clubs formed a Federation in 1895 with Mrs. Blair as the President. She decided to appoint a meeting at the Pemigewasset House in Plymouth on July 12, 1897.
Mrs. Alfred Campbell, the wife of the Principal of Plymouth Normal School, invited the influential women of the town to Normal Hall to offer the idea that before this meeting convened in July, a woman's club ought to be organized in the town. On June 26, 1897, the Pemigewasset Woman's Club became a fact with Mrs. Alvin Burleigh as its president.
Mrs. Blair was a woman with ideals that she had learned from her Methodist minister father. She immediately developed a program based upon philanthropic and educational efforts with conservation soon added to the list. The New Hampshire Federation of Women's Clubs today is follow- ing the program that Mrs. Blair instituted in 1896 - 1898.
The Pemigewasset Woman's Club immediately began to think about the betterment of the community. They organized a lecture course that brought such famous speakers as Russell Conwell with his "Acres of Diamonds," May Alden Ward and Prof. Francis Richardson of Dartmouth that filled the Kidder Hall at a price of thirty-five cents per ticket.
One of the lasting projects for the use of their funds was to illuminate the town clock in the tower of Rounds Hall. One of the questions asked in 1962 is how did the town become the owner of this clock? Probably, when the town purchased the Holmes Plymouth Academy, this is the clock that was then in the tower and was placed in Rounds Hall in 1896. No records can be discovered that the town purchased a clock otherwise. The fact that the bell is dated at the time when the Academy tower was erected bears out this idea.
THE DRAPER-MAYNARD COMPANY
In the year 1900 an industry that brought growth to Plymouth was established, the Draper-Maynard Sporting Goods Company.
The first member of the Draper Family in Plymouth settled on the Intervale before 1776. He was a soldier in the Revolution, named Jacob. His son, Nathaniel, lived on Ward Hill, married Mary Gill and among his
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Jason F. Draper, 1850 - 1913
John E. Maynard, 1846 - 1937
seven children were Jason C. and Nathaniel Fletcher. They were the same age as Alvah McQuesten and when they were young men, they became glove manufacturers in Plymouth, then in Bristol.
Nathaniel Fletcher had a son, Jason Fletcher, born in Plymouth in 1850. He followed in the glove business.
Meanwhile John F. Maynard was born in Loudon, attended business college in Manchester, then studied architecture and became a contractor and builder, with his uncle, John Maynard, in Manchester.
In 1875 he formed a partnership with Jason Fletcher Draper in the firm of Draper-Maynard Company at Glove Hollow. With Mr. Draper managing the factory and Mr. Maynard in the selling line, their business increased rapidly.
A tannery was purchased in Ashland, a factory and storehouses were erected in that town, and the business flourished there for nine years. Mr. Draper married Hattie C. Russell, the daughter of Pelatiah Russell, who was manufacturing gloves in Plymouth. Mr. Maynard married first Harriet E. Draper who died in 1879, then her sister, Henrietta F. Draper, the daughters of Nathaniel F. Draper and sisters of Jason F., his partner.
When the firm decided to enlarge their plant, naturally they purchased a site in Plymouth. Between the Universalist church and the Plymouth Town Hall was a vacant space on Main Street where the large wooden factory, 104
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First Draper, Maynard Factory, 1900
feet in length and three stories high, was constructed by Mr. Maynard in 1900.
The glove business had then become over-crowded, but a new line was making rapid strides. Baseball was becoming a popular game, but played barehanded. Arthur Irwin, who was a skilled baseball player, designed a padded glove that he brought to the factory in Ashland. He persuaded the firm to manufacture and sell his idea. Mr. Maynard traveled across the country advertising this glove with such success that Draper-Maynard Com- pany added other lines of sporting goods that required a staff of fifty men and twenty-five women.
About 1910, the factory burned in a night. Immediately a brick build- ing, four stories high rose from the ashes, business increased and a larger force of employees was necessary. This brought many families to Plymouth. High and Emerson Streets were opened and other streets extended into the suburbs.
Over the doorway on Main Street hung a figure of a dog, said to have been modelled by Mr. Draper's hound, and named "The Lucky Dog." This became the trade mark and Lucky Dog baseballs and gloves, then sweaters and other sports' garments were found in stores everywhere.
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The national baseball leagues demanded baseballs by the hundreds. Women learned to sew the covers and skilled employees became expert in gauging the weight and the perfect shape of a baseball in their hands.
On Pleasant street, the Draper Home and the John and Edward Maynard houses and other Victorian dwellings were erected, and cottage houses be- longing to employees rapidly increased in numbers. "The Draper-Maynard Company was like one big family," to quote the words of a citizen in 1925.
There is an old wives' saying, "The big fish eat up the little ones." Athletics in colleges, high schools, cities and hamlets became one of the major industries of the nation. Competition by big business in sporting goods ate up the little ones. Although the Draper-Maynard Company added football and golf supplies to its products, gradually competition and other forces overcame the company.
Mr. Draper died in a few years. Mr. Maynard lived to be ninety-one years of age in 1937. Soon after the business closed its doors. The wives of these families were influential in church, club, and social work. Their gen- erosity was adequate to the wants of the community.
THE PEG AND BOBBIN MILL
Two young men arrived in Plymouth in 1898 to erect a plant for manu- facturing split wooden shoe pegs and bobbins. Mr. Edward J. and Mr. George R. were sons of Mr. Jacob Foster of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts who was owner of several mills in other localities.
Several acres of meadow land were purchased near the mouth of the Baker River for the site of the mills and for homes of the employees.
The elder brother was already married to Miss Mabel L. Jenks of Shel- burne Falls and soon the younger married Miss Christabel Allen of Littleton, New Hampshire. They erected spacious homes on North Main Street, over- looking the Pemigewasset River and across to Mount Prospect.
The responsibility was divided with Edwin J. as the accountant and manager; and George R. as the machinist who had invented several improve- ments to the complicated machines that produced 300 bushels of shoe pegs per day. Later, 15,000 bobbins were turned in the mill daily.
The shoe pegs were purchased by factories in this country, but were also ordered by thousands by European shoe industries. Gradually the American shoe industry ceased to order wooden pegs. After the second World War, the demand decreased until the mills in Plymouth closed and only the factory in Bartlett continued with Mr. George R. Foster the manager. New materials substituted for wooden pegs and the business closed entirely.
The Draper, Maynard Company purchased the property in 1922 for an
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extension of the business. In 1936 the United Shank & Findings Company of the United Shoe Manufacturing Corporation acquired the mill and have operated there since that year.
Both of these brothers and their wives participated in the religious and civic affairs of the village. Mr. Edwin J. possessed a fine bass voice that was heard in the choir of the Congregational church over the years. Mr. George R. was active in the dramatic societies that produced amateur plays in the Kidder Music Hall. Both were directors in the Pemigewasset National Bank and held the chairs in the fraternal organizations. Their advice in civic busi- ness was sought continually.
PLYMOUTH HIGH SCHOOL
The following excerpts are copied from a historical address by Miss Caroline W. Mudgett and Mrs. Ruth McClure Chase that was delivered at the dedication ceremony of the first High School building in 1904.
"The history of Plymouth High School falls into three periods. The first was in the old schoolhouse, half way up Court Street, made of the old Holmes Academy building. In 1883 when Plymouth High School was or- ganized, it sheltered the entire Normal School, the High School and the grades for the village schools of Plymouth.
"The school was an integrant part of the Normal School, under the direc- tion of its principal. A single teacher presided over the High School room and taught the branches not included in the Normal curriculum. In other studies we recited with the Normals.
"The course was of three years and Latin was the only foreign language. The laboratories were poorly equipped, the library meager. The graduates numbered sixty-six, scattered from Maine to California: doctors, lawyers, teachers, mothers, all better for those High School years.
"The second period began in September, 1891 when the school trans- ferred to the new Normal building at the top of the hill and for a decade remained a part of the Training School.
"In September, 1893, a man was appointed in the position of High School Principal thus placing the discipline in the hands of its own teacher, aided by one assistant. Gradually, even in classes conducted by Normal instructors, the two schools were separated.
"The curriculum was being constantly revised. In June 1896, for the first time, a class was graduated from a full four years course with four years of Latin, two of French, and other studies to meet the requirements of college entrance.
"Mr. Jenks, the second principal, introduced recreational trips to New-
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found Lake and to the summit of Mount Prospect. These years saw the formation of the first baseball team and football with interscholastic contests. In the late '90's and early 1900's the Plymouth High School had graduates at Dartmouth, Harvard, West Point, Boston University and Wesleyan, also at Smith, Wellesley, Vassar, Radcliffe and Mt. Holyoke, and others attending the best finishing schools.
"In 1901, a strange change happened. The High School wearily climbed the steep stairs in the Kidder Block for three years.
"Now, the class of 1904 is holding its graduation in the new High School Building. Now the School is entirely separated from the Normal School with a faculty that provides a teacher for every department."
SUMMARY
Opening the Emily Balch Cottage Hospital, the Rollins Building and Fruit Store of Mr. Gaspar (Police) Borella, the Pemigewasset Woman's Club, The Draper, Maynard Company in Plymouth, the Fosters' Wooden Peg and Bobbin Mill, and the Development of Plymouth High School.
The Red Sox baseball team visited the. D&M factory in 1916, and the famous Babe Ruth is shown above attempting to sew the cover on a baseball.
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1903 - 1913
This might be considered the decade of changes in recreation, transpor- tation, and national and international viewpoints.
Motion picture films were displayed in Music Hall in the Kidder build- ing, four evenings per week, at the price of ten cents per person with the exception of special attractions. William Farhnum was the hero of Western horsemanship and Marguerite Clark the drawing card for romance. Then Mary Pickford became the "Sweetheart of the Screen" with twenty-five cents per ticket for her programs.
Ford cars were popular and the newspaper announced that H. E. Berry was "trying-out a Buick." The one hindrance was clouds of dust behind every car. Men wore tightfitting caps and goggles while women swathed their heads in yards of veiling and everybody wore dusters.
Nationally, Theodore Roosevelt was a popular President with his "big- stick" policies. Internationally, Kaiser William, Emperor of Germany, was causing some nervous fears in France and England because he was drilling a military force in central Europe with sinister possibilities.
In Plymouth, business was prospering with the beginning of the new era. Nobody can recall who first offered gasoline for sale or who opened the first beauty parlor a half century ago.
Two families arrived in the town that maintain successful places of busi- ness in 1963: the Samaha and the Saliba Families. Also, a religious element, the Catholic Church, was inaugurated by several families from Ireland.
THE SAMAHA FAMILY
Approximately sixty-five years ago the ancestor of the Samaha Family in Plymouth arrived in Massachusetts, a member of the Samaha Clan of Lebanon in Asia. A son, Abdelnour, opened a dry goods store in Laconia on the site of the present Woolworth store in 1905. Three years later, he re- moved to Plymouth to establish his store in the block that Mr. Walter Mason erected in 1878, afterward purchased by Mr. Cyrus Sargent, known as the Sargent Block on the corner of Main and Bridge streets.
Mr. Samaha married Miss Madeleine Samaha who came to Plymouth in 1921, after graduating from the British Junior College, a Quaker institution
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in Beirut, Syria. This couple continued to operate their dry goods store until the death of Mr. Samaha in 1959. Mrs. Samaha has carried on the business, although she was compelled to move to 117 Main street in the Edgar Block when the Sargent Block was condemned and razed recently. She carries lines of goods of established quality that this firm has stocked over the years.
The four children of this couple are graduates of New Hampshire Uni- versity, the University of Beirut and Harvard. One is a successful dentist in Concord. A daughter is employed in teaching at the Marine School at Quan- tico, Virginia, and another daughter is on the faculty at Plymouth Teachers College. The other son is in the shoe business in Haverhill, Massachusetts.
In 1910, two brothers of Abdelnour, Ameen and Louis, came to Plym- outh. Ameen opened a grocery store on Main street opposite the Plymouth Inn, which he continued until his death.
Louis Samaha built his store on Bridge street, gradually extended the building to Main street and now on the same site, his son, Norman, operates the oldest established grocery business in Plymouth. His children are gradu- ates of Plymouth High School, have returned to Lebanon for study, and at- tended New Hampshire University.
The son of a sister, Mrs. Rahegie Samaha, is Clerk of the Superior Court for Grafton County, Mr. Unwar Samaha.
The Samahas are loyal members of the Episcopal Church. The late Mrs. Louis Samaha is gratefully remembered for her kindness and generosity for all good causes in the community.
THE SALIBA FAMILY
The Saliba Family emigrated to the United States about 1895 from Betegreen, a mountain village in Lebanon, Asia. Through frugality and per- sistence, success has resulted for their enterprises.
The first to arrive in Plymouth was George Ferris Saliba. Then his brother, Adib Moses Saliba and family settled on a farm at Campton Bog. After eight years, the family moved to Plymouth and began a small grocery store in a building opposite the D.&M. Factory. By gradually increasing his merchandise and dealing in lumber, his financial success permitted Mr. Saliba to change his business to dry goods.
About ten years ago, the residence on High street that was the home of Mr. Samuel Cummings Webster and later of his daughter, Winnie, was pur- chased by the Saliba Family. There the aged parents were cared for.
The son, Moses, Jr., graduated from New Hampshire University, then joined in the dry goods business at "The Style Center" on Main street. Since the death of Mr. Moses Saliba, Sr., the former business is continued by Mrs. Saliba.
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Railroad Square and the Second Pemigewasset House that was destroyed by fire in 1909. (See page 82.)
Soon after Mr. Moses, Sr., died, Plymouth Teachers College purchased the property on High street and a modern home has been erected on Ward Hill where the view over the river valley recalls the landscape of the moun- tains of Lebanon, their ancestral home.
ST. MATTHEW CATHOLIC CHURCH
The pioneer family of St. Matthew Parish was Mr. and Mrs. Edward Coffee who arrived from Boston in 1859. They were joined by Mr. and Mrs. Maurice C. Condon in 1880. Mr. and Mrs. Felix McCarthy came from Ireland in 1890.
Missionaries from Tilton conducted the first Catholic services in 1901 at the home of Mr. Coffee. St. Matthew Parish became a mission of Ashland in 1904.
The congregation increased in numbers that could be no longer accom- modated in homes. The Universalist church was closed at that time and this edifice served for the parish masses during the next three or four years.
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