Old days at Beverly Farms

OLD DAYS

AT

BEVERLY FARMS

BY

MARY LARCOM DOW

^

Class _JJJ^_

Copyright 1^^_

COPYRIGHT DEPOSrr.

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OLD DAYS

AT

BEVERLY FARMS

Dvt^' MARY LARCOM DOW

PUBLISHED AND SOLD BY
NORTH SHORE PRINTING CO.
FIVE WASHINGTON STREET
BEVERLY. MASSACHUSETTS
1921

3 3^11 7

COPYRIGHT 1921

BY

KATHARINE P. LORING

OCT -3 7

§)C!.A627101

^

PREFACE

During the last month of his life, Mr. Dow
asked his friend and pastor, Rev. Clarence
Strong Pond, to see that "Old Days at
Beverly Farms," written by Mrs. Dow, was
printed. He also asked me to write a sketch
of her life to publish with it. The answer is
this little book, a loving tribute from many
friends.

Beside those whose names appear on its
pages, Mrs. Alice Bolam Preston has drawn
the front door and knocker of the "Home-
stead." Mrs. Bridgeford and Mrs. Edwin L.
Pride supplied the originals of the portraits.
Mrs. Howard A. Doane, "Elsie," has collected
information, in which task she has been helped
by many of the neighbors. The money, with-
out which we could have done nothing, has
been given by Mrs. F. Gordon Dexter, Mrs.
Charles M. Cabot, Miss Elizabeth W. Perkins
and Miss Louisa P. Loring.

Mrs. William Caleb Loring bought Mrs.
Dow's house after her death and gave it to

Page five

St. John's Parish for a parish house. She
directed that a tablet should be placed in it
to preserve the memory of our friend.

In examining the titles Mr. Samuel Vaughan
found that Mrs. Dow's great grandfather,
Jonathan Larcom, did not sell his slaves.
He was administrator of his father, David
Larcom's estate in 1775. In the appraisal,
six slaves are mentioned by name, valued
at £106 13s. 4d. but none are mentioned in
the division. It appears that they became
free when their master died. All slaves were
considered free in Massachusetts when the
State Constitution was adopted in 1780.

Katharine P. Loring

Page six

CONTENTS

Page

Sketch of Mary Larcom Dow 9

Old Days at Beverly Farms 25

Lucy Larcom — A Memory 63

Letters written by Mrs. Dow 68

Appreciation by Sarah E. Miller 79

Extracts from letters about Mrs. Dow 81

THE LIFE

OF

MARY LARCOM DOW

"It seems as if the spirit had dropped out
of Beverly Farms since Molly Ober died."

One of her friends said this and the others
feel it. For sixty years or more she was the
leader in the real life of the place. And
speaking of friends, there is no limit of them,
for her genial kindly nature allowed us all to
claim that prized relationship.

Mary Larcom Ober was the daughter of
Mary Larcom and Benjamin Ober. Mrs.
Ober's parents were Andrew and Molly,
(Standley) Larcom. Andrew's father and
mother were Jonathan and Abigail (Ober)
Larcom; they had eight children, the three
youngest of whom are connected with this
story. The oldest of these three was David
who married Elizabeth Haskell known as
"Aunt Betsey"; they had a son David.
The next brother was Benjamin whose first

Page nine

The Life of Mary Larcom Dow

wife was Charlotte Ives, and his second,
Lois Barrett. Of this second marriage, one
of the daughters was Lucy Larcom, the
poetess and the editor also of the "Lowell
Offering." Andrew Larcom was the youngest
of these brothers. Thus it is that his grand-
daughter, our Mary, was a cousin in the next
generation of Lucy Larcom; although she
was older than Mary they were always great
friends and what Lucy tells us in "A New
England Girlhood" of her experience is as
true of one as of the other little girl.

"Our parents considered it a duty
that they owed to the youngest of us
to teach us doctrines. And we
believed in our instructors, if we could
not always digest their instructions."
"We learned to reverence truth as
they received it and lived it, and to
feel that the search for truth was the
one chief end of our being. It was a
pity that we were expected to begin
thinking upon hard subjects so soon,
and it is also a pity that we were set
to hard work while so young. Yet

Page ten

The Life of Marij Larcom Dow

these were both the inevitable results
of circumstances then existing, and
perhaps the two belonged together.
Perhaps habits of conscientious work
induce thought and habits of right
thinking. Certainly right thinking
naturally impels people to work."
Mr. Andrew Larcom lived on the farm
where Mr. Gordon Dexter now lives; here
our Mary's mother was bom and passed her
childhood. It was a delightful farm with
much less woodland than now and its boun-
daries were much larger; salt hay was cut on
the marsh land that stretched toward the
sea, and where it ended above the beach there
were thickets of wild plum, whose purple
fruit made delicious preserves. This marsh
was not drained as it is now, little rivers of
water ran through it at high tide reflecting
the sunlight.

When Benjamin Ober, who was first mate of
an East Indiaman, married Mary Larcom
they went to live in the house on the north
side of Mingo Beach Hill. It was a smaller
house then, and close to the road, with a

Page eleven

The Life of Marij Larcom Dow

lovely outlook over the sea. A page of Lucy
Larcom's gives so charming an account of
"the Farms" it must be quoted here, as Mary
Ober was fond of it. The old homestead
was where Andrew and Mary Larcom lived,
while "Uncle David" and "Aunt Betsey"
lived in the house which we know as Mary
Ober's house in the middle of the village.
"Sometimes this same brother
would get permission to take me on a
longer excursion, to visit the old
homestead at the "Farms." Three
or four miles was not thought too
long a walk for a healthy child of five
years, and that road in the old time,
led through a rural Paradise beauti-
ful at every season, — whether it was
the time of song sparrows and violets,
or wild roses, or coral-hung barberry
bushes, or of fallen leaves and snow
drifts. We stopped at the Cove
Brook to hear the cat birds sing, and
at Mingo Beach to revel in the sudden
surprise of the open sea and to listen
to the chant of the waves always

Page twelve

The Life of Mary Larcom Dou)

Stronger and grander there than any
where along the shore. We passed
under dark wooded cliffs out into
sunny openings, the last of which
held under its skirting pines the
secret of the prettiest wood path to
us, in all the world, the path to the
ancestral farm-house . ' '

"Farther down the road where the
cousins were all grown up men and
women, Aunt Betsey's cordial old-
fashioned hospitality sometimes de-
tained us a day or two. We watched
the milking, fed the chickens and
fared gloriously. Aunt Betsey could
not have done more to entertain us
had we been the President's children."

"We took in a home-feeling with
the words 'Aunt Betsey' then and
always. She had just the husband
that belonged to her in my Uncle
David, an upright man, frank-faced,
large of heart and spiritually-minded.
He was my father's favorite brother,
and to our branch of the family.

Page thirteen

The Life of Mary Larcom Dow

the Farms' meant Uncle David and
Aunt Betsey."

The Farms was of greater relative import-
ance in those days. The farms were fairly
fertile and were carefully tilled. Their
owners, former sea captains, were well-to-do,
there were two good schools and the Third
Social Library was founded in 1806. The
first catalogue, written in 1811, is still pre-
served, there are some books marked "Read
at Sea," among them "The Saint's Ever-
lasting Rest," "Edwards on Affliction" and
the first volume of Josephus, cheerful reading
for the young captains.

Toward the middle of the century summer
fishing took the place of merchant voyages,
so the sea-men turned to shoe making in the
winter. Almost every house had its little
10 X 10 shoe shop, in which was room for one
man on a low stool, a chair for a visitor, an
iron stove, a bench with tools, the oval
lap-stone to peg shoes on, with rolls and
scraps of leather, withal a pungent smell.

In the house on Mingo Beach Hill our
Mary Larcom Ober was bom in 1835 and

Page fourteen

the Life of Mary Larcom Dow

here her father died in the same year.
There was an older sister Abigail, who died
when she was a young woman.

After a while, the widow returned to her
father's home; in 1840 she was married to
her cousin David Larcom the younger, and
they lived in the Larcom House at the
Farms. As his father, the first "Uncle
David" died, in the same year, his widow,
"Aunt Betsey", moved upstairs. David and
his wife with her children Abby and Mary
lived below; four children were bom to them
David, Lydia, Joseph and Theodore.

From Mingo Beach Hill and the homestead
the West Farms school was nearer, so Mary
must first have gone to school in the little
square building which was later for one year
the High School, now since many years a
dwelling house near Pride's Crossing. After
the family moved to the Farms she probably
went to the East Farms school, which was
nearly opposite the church. She spent some
time at the Francestown Academy, Hillsboro
County, New Hampshire, and finished her
education at the State Normal School in

Pagefi/teen

The Life of Mary Larcom Dow

Salem where she was graduated with.the second
class after its foundation. She with her sister
Abby worked their way through this school by
binding shoes. This was the women's share of
the hand-made shoe described in Lucy Lar-
com's "Hannah binding shoes."

Soon after graduation, Mary was appointed
teacher in a grammar school at Brewster on
Cape Cod. The next year she was engaged for a
school in Castine, Maine . Here she found the
pupils were big boys, almost men grown, and
she feared she would not be able to manage
them. However, when they found that she was
a good teacher who could give them what they
wanted to learn, there was no trouble.

Then in 1858 and 1859 our Miss Ober began
to teach the Farms School (the two schools
being imited) on Indian Hill just above Pride's
Crossing station; the building was remodelled
later and is now the house of Mrs. James F.
Curtis. Grades were unknown, she had some
twenty to thirty pupils of all ages, but she
managed to keep them in order and to teach
them so well that they always remembered
what they learned. She stimulated the bright

Page sixteen

The Life of Mary Larcom Dow

children to greater effort and she encouraged
the dull ones so that they were surprised into
understanding. One of her old girls told me
how they loved her but feared her in school,
and enjoyed her when out. She especially liked
boiled lobster and dandelion greens served
together ; whenever these viands were for dinner
the child was told by her mother to bring the
teacher home to share them, and "then what a
good time we had." She smiled as she said it,
but there was a tear in her eye.

At about this time Miss Ober was engaged to
an attractive young man, a teacher in the
Beverly Farms school. There was every
promise of a happy life, but unfortunately
he died. Miss Ober went on with her school
until 1870, except during 1862 and 1865, but
she was not strong and her health was
impaired.

In a much loved and worn volume of
Whittier's poems, given to Mary Ober in
1858-1859 is written in her own hand, "the
happiest winter of my life." Pinned to a leaf
is a cutting, with the following epitaph from
an old English burial ground:

Page seventeen

The Life of Mary Larcom DoW

"I will not bind myself to grief:
'Tis but as if the roses that climbed

My garden wall
Had blossomed on the other side."
The poems she marked are: "The Kansas
Emigrants," "Question of Life," and "Gone,"
in this last poem she underscored the verse:
"And grant that she who trembling here,
Distrusted all her powers,
May welcome to her holier home
The all beloved of ours."
These are keys to her thoughts, she believed
in abolition, in the saving of the Union, she
was absorbed in the Civil War, in the going
away of relatives and friends, and she took
great interest in the work of the Sanitary
Commission. My grandmother, Mrs. Charles
G. Loring, worked in the commission rooms
in Boston by day, in the evening she would
bring materials and drive about in her buggy
to distribute them among the neighbors,
collecting the finished garments to be carried
back to Boston by an early train. Mary
Ober often went with her, helping in all ways,
and they became great friends; it was partly

Page eighteen

The Life of Mary Larcom t)ou)

through her influence that Mary went to
Florida for the benefit of her health i^i the
winter of 1871. The next winter she took a
school in Georgia under the "Freedman's
Bureau" where she taught the little darkies,
who adored her. In 1872 and 1873 she
taught the children of the poor whites in
the school at Wilmington, North Carolina,
and it was here that she met Sarah E. Miller
who was to be her devoted, life-long friend.
This was the Tileston School founded by Mrs.
Mary Hemenway, its principal was Miss
Amy Bradley; it was perhaps the best known
school carried on by the northerners in the
South.

For two years longer she taught half terms
in Beverly Farms and then as she regained
health and strength, from 1875 to 1899 Miss
Ober was head of the Farms School, then in
Haskell Street, beginning with a salary of
$180. She never had a large salary.
It was considered the best school in
the town. The building 'was the wooden
one, now a house, on the next lot to
the brick school. She kept up with

Page nineleen

The Life of Manj Larcom Dou)

the times, introduced grades and had
several assistants as the years went on. She
continued her career as a most successful
teacher, she was strict but just and kind,
always interested in her children whether in
school or afterward, keeping in touch with
them and following their careers with sym-
pathy. When Mr. Charles H. Trowt was
elected Mayor of the City she wrote: "And
you were my curly-headed, fair-haired little
boy in school."

She had a happy home with her mother
and stepfather; "Uncle David" she always
called him, though she maintained the rela-
tion of a loving daughter. Her mother died
in the spring of 1876 and Mr. Larcom died in
1883.

Miss Ober was always a great reader,
she chose the best books and kept in touch
with the topics of the day. We all remember
her long walks in the woods and fields, her
delight in the first spring flowers and the
song of the birds; she shared Bryant's regret
in the autumn, but her winters were made
cheerful by her hospitality at home. Friends

Page twenty

The Life of Mary Larcom Dow

were always dropping in to read, to sew or
to have a good game of whist in the after-
noon or evening.

Another quotation from '*A New England
Girlhood" seems appropriate here.

"The period of my growing up had
peculiarities which our future history
can never repeat, although something
far better is undoubtedly already
resulting thence. Those peculiari-
ties were the natural development of
the seed sown by our sturdy Puritan
ancestry. The religion of our fathers
overhung us children like the shadow
of a mighty tree against the tmnk of
which we rested, while we looked up
in wonder through the great boughs
that half hid and half revealed the
sky. Some of the boughs were
already decaying, so that perhaps we
began to see a little more of the sky
than our elders; but the tree was
sound at its heart. There was life in
it that can never be lost to the
world."

Page twenty-one

The Life of Mary Larcom Dow

In reading this charming biography one
is impressed with the strict doctrine under
which Lucy Larcom was brought up. Miss
Ober's theology was more Hberal. The church
at the Farms was established in 1829 under
the auspices of the First Parish in Beverly,
(Unitarian) it was called simply the "Christian
Church" and it was some years before it
became Baptist. Miss Ober was an active
and devoted member of the church and a
good helper in parish work.

It seems as if their common interest in the
church and love for flowers must have first
attracted her to Mr. James Beatty Dow, to
whom she was married in 1889. Mr. Dow was
a Scotchman with the virtues of that race. Of
course he had a good education, he was a gar-
dener by profession and a successful one. Beside
his work for the church and the Sunday school
he was interested in civic affairs; at one time he
was representative at The Great and General
Court and he was a member of the School
Committee of Beverly.

Mrs. Dow did not give up her school until
ten years after her marriage but she paid more

Page twenty-two

The Life of Mary Larcom Dow

attention in equally successful manner to
housekeeping and social duties. Miss Miller,
her friend from the days of the Wilmington
School, was a constant and welcome guest.
They loved books, they read and played
together, they formed reading clubs to discuss
works of importance and enjoyed poetry and
good fiction. There were flashes of wit and
a lightness of touch in Mrs. Dow's approach
which were quite un-English, they may be
attributed to her Larcom ancestry. The
Larcoms were the La Combes of Languedoc,
Huguenots who escaped to Wales, later moved
to the Isle of Wight, and thence came to
New England in the ship Hercules in 1640.
TheObers came from Abbotsburyin England
in early days, there is every reason to believe
that they were also of Huguenot descent, by
name "Auber," but this is not proved.

The years passed rapidly, the quiet life at
the Farms broken by little excursions to the
theatre, concerts and visits to friends in Boston,
with occasional trips to the White Mountains,
New York and other places. There were
endless interests and accomplishments and

Page twenty-three

The Life of Mary Larcom Dow

enjoyments. The World War brought grief
and tragedy and abounding opportunity for
sympathy and action; by no one was a
saner interest taken in all its phases than
by Mary Dow.

As time passed and strength failed, Mrs.
Dow never grew old; she joked about her
"infirmities" but we did not see them. She
mastered them and kept on in her lively active
interests and duties to the end.

During the winter of 1919-20 Mr. Dow
was very ill. His wife nursed him with too
great devotion and her strength gave out.
Mercifully, she was spared a long illness, she
died on the eleventh of June, 1920. Mr. Dow
lingered until the sixteenth of September.

This is the end of the story, or is it the
beginning?

Page twenty -four

OLD DAYS

AT

BEVERLY FARMS

In writing these hap-hazard memories of
the old days at Beveriy Farms, I did not
mean that they should be egotistical, but in
spite of my good intentions I am afraid they
are. You see it is almost impossible to sepa-
rate yourself from your own memories! I
throw myself upon the mercy of the Court!
Summer of 1916.

We have a little Reading Club here at
Beverly Farms. We read whatever happens
to come up, from Chesterton's Dickens to
'The Woman who was Tired to Death,"
interspersed with real poems from "North of
Boston." I belong to the Club. I am the
oldest member of it, in fact, I am the oldest
person in New England — on stormy days!
When the weather is fine and the wind south-
west, I am young enough to have infantile
paralysis !

One day, in my enforced absence from the
Club, my colleagues conspired against me.

Page twenty-five

Old Days at Beverly Farms

and with no regard to my feelings, selected me
to write up some remembrances of old Beverly
Farms. Hence these tears! Elsie Doane
belongs to this Club. Elsie is behind me
about half a century, if you allow the Family
Bible to know anything about so indifferent a
thing as age. She was one of the few infants
under my care when she was pupil and I was
teacher, who had a real love for literature for
literature's sake, and we had good chummy
times when it was stormy and we carried
dinner to school, and ate it peacefully in an
atmosphere that smelt of a leaky furnace and
fried doughnuts, in spite of open windows.

It doesn't smell that way now, for Mr.
Little has made the school-house of that day a
pretty summer home for whomsoever will live
in it. Elsie promises to set me right whenever
I go astray as to what happened at old Beverly
Farms, how it looked, what legends it had —
how its people lived and behaved, and so
forth, and so forth. She is a foxy little thing,
and I suspect that when she is floored on my
reminiscences, she will appeal to her mother,
who, she says is older than she is ! We do not

Page twenty-six

Old Days at Beverly Farms

promise any coherence in our stories. It will
be somewhat of a hash that we shall give our
listeners wherein it will be difficult to decide
whether it is "fish, flesh, fowl, or good red
herring." But we have no reporter at our
Club, so we give our memories free rein.

I often wish I could catch and fix, by the
kodak of memory, some of the celebrities of
my childhood, in this little village.

What a character, for instance, was Uncle
David Larcom ! Among the old Puritans who
were his ancestors, and among whom he was
raised, what a constant surprise he must have
been! Certainly no hero of a dime novel
could have done more startling and audacious
things. He ran off to sea in his youth and
stayed away from the village for three years.
During that time, he had seen and experienced
enough to satisfy Tom Sawyer; he had messed
with Indian Lascars and acquired a taste for
curry and red pepper which he never lost.
And with the love for stimulating diet he
gained a love for stimulating stories, and
could draw the very longest kind of 'an innocent
bow, that carried far and never hurt anybody.

Page twentg-seven

Old Days at Beverly Farms

Who could forget his yams of the sea serpent
and his life on the old English Brig? "Has
he got to the old English brig?" his waggish
son would inquire, as he listened from an
adjoining room.

He gave away a wonderful old mirror,
beautifully carved, with a lion's head at the
bottom, and a boy astride a goose at the top,
with leaves and bunches of grapes at the sides,
and glass, as it seems to me, almost an inch
thick. It hangs now in the drawing room of
its possessor restored to pristine beauty and
bearing an inscription setting forth that it
came from the wreck of the "Schooner
Hesperus."

Uncle David told this yarn when he gave
away the beautiful mirror. Nobody had
ever before heard of this connection with the
Schooner Hesperus. My own impression is
that the mirror was brought to the old house,
which I now own, by Aunt Betsey Larcom,
the great grandmother of Elsie Doane. Dear
old Uncle David! Sometimes his language
was not choice, but how big his heart was!

After he uncoiled his sea legs and settled

Page twenty-eight

Old Days at Beverly F'armS

down to teaming, mildly flavored with farming
was there ever a more generous or a more
kindly neighbor?

People often cheated him, in fact, he almost
seemed to like being cheated.

His patient wife once remarked that he
always wanted to give his own things away,
and buy things for more than people asked
for them. He would match Uncle Toby's
army in Flanders for profanity, but he would
go miles to help a sick friend, or, (and this is
to my mind, the last test of friendship in a
horse owner) turn out his old "Bun" on the
stormiest night that ever raged, to help a
brother teamster up a hill. And when were
ever his own rakes and plows and forks at
home? Weren't they always lent out some-
where? What a reverence for all things
sacred, way down in the bottom of his large
heart he always had! How deferential to
ministers he was! How angry he would be
at any unnecessary breaking of the "Sah-
bath" as he called it. How steadily he read,
(though he wouldn't go to church) all day and
all the evening of the Lord's Day — taking up

Page twenty-nine

Old Days at Beverly Farms

his book at night, where he left it to feed his
"critturs," and holding his sperm oil lamp in
his hand as he finished his day of rest. Some
of his expressions remain in my mind as, for
instance "From July to Eternity," to indicate
his weariness at something too much pro-
longed. He liked to exaggerate as well as
Mark Twain did, as when he used to wish on
a furiously stormy night, that he were way
over on Half Way Rock, always being careful
to have a tremendous fire going, and a pitcher
of cider at hand, before he expressed the desire.
The memory of his good, religious father was
always with him, and when he was in a par-
ticularly genial frame of mind, he would sing
snatches of the old tunes he had heard his
father sing: —

"The Lord into his garden comes

The spices yield their rich "Perfooms"

The lillies grow and thrive"
was one of his special favorites.

His kindly handsome face, his enormous
size, his laugh, which was ten laughs in one,
are among the clear remembrances of my
childhood.

Fagc thirty

Old Days at Beverly Parm

And I can hardly close this sketch better
than by quoting his old family doctor's words:
"Swear, yes, but his swearing was better than
some folks' praying."

I should like to "summon from the vasty
deep" some of the other old people, both
white and black, who lived here in the old
days. Just back of where Mr. Prick's stable
now stands at Pride's Crossing lived Jacob
Brower, a little old man of Dutch descent,
with his wife and family. She was a sister of
Mrs. Peter Pride, who lived in the first house
west of the Pride's Crossing station. I
remember Aunt Pride as an extremely hand-
some, tall, dark, dignified woman. She be-
longed to the Thissell family. Lucy and
Frank Eldredge came of this family, and
Willis Pride, and I suppose "Thissell 's Market"
claims relation too!

The next house east of the station, on the
other side of the road was a tumble down
old house innocent of paint, and black with age,
inhabited by three old African women —
named Chloe Turner, Phillis Cave and Nancy
Milan, all widows.

Page thirty-one

Old Days at Beverly Farms

The house, after the railroad cut it off from
the main road, was so near the track that one
could almost step from the rock doorstep to
the rails, and the old crazy structure shook
every time an infrequent train passed, we
had four trains to Boston daily then. I remem-
ber how the old house smelt and how the
rickety stairs creaked under one's feet.

When my great great-grandfather, David
Larcom, married the widow of John West and
brought her to his home (now the Gordon
Dexter place) she brought with her as part of
her dower, a negro woman, a remarkable char-
acter, named Juno Freeman. This woman
was the mother of a large family. Mary
Herrick West's father was a Captain Herrick
and he brought Juno, a slave from North
Carolina in his ship.

Juno's children took the Larcom name and
remained as slave property in the Larcom
family, till, in my great-grandfather's time
they were sold. My uncle Rufus told me
that this ancestor, Jonathan Larcom, was
sharp, and, hearing that all slaves in Massa-
chusetts were to be freed, sold his.

Page Ihirly-livo

Old Days at Beverly Farms

The old house I have mentioned was given
to Juno Larcom, it being on the land known
as the "gate pasture" and in after years, when
Mr. Franklin Haven wanted to open an
avenue there, he took a land rent from my
stepfather, David Larcom, had the old house
torn down, and put a little house for Nancy
Milan (who was then the only survivor of the
three old widows) right by my piazza, on the
east side, and there Aunt Milan died peace-
fully in the spring of 1869.

Aunt Milan's mother, Phillis Cave, was
brought to Danvers in the boot of Judge
Cave's chaise, and afterwards somehow drifted
to Beverly. Judge Cave's daughter, Maria
Cummins, wrote the "Lamplighter," a book of
great popularity in this region, in her
day. Phillis worked in the best Beverly
families, the Rantouls, Endicotts, and others,
and used to walk to Beverly, work all day, and
walk home at night. I remember wondering if
all the washing she did had made the palms of
her hands so much whiter than the rest of her.

Aunt Chloe and Aunt Milan were pretty
lazy old things, but everybody liked them

Page thirty-three

Old Days at Beverly Farms

and contributed good naturedly to their sup-
port. After Aunt Milan came down to live
by us, Mr. Asa Larcom and my step-father
furnished a good deal of her living, and the
town gave her fifty cents a week. She never
could hear of the poor house. Wherever Aunt
Chloe got the candy and nuts she always had
on hand for children, I cannot imagine. She
wore a pumpkin hood (a headgear made of
wadded woolen or silk, with a little back
frill,) and the Brazil nuts used to be taken out
of the back of the hood. My brother David
said he used to eat candy from the same
receptacle, but then he was a Larcom and had
imagination!

The old brick meeting house had a wooden
bench built upstairs near the choir, and there
these three black persons sat, every Sunday,
thro' their peaceful lives. I think that was a
pretty low down trick of those old Baptists,
particularly as the ladies in question always
sat at our tables.

We old dwellers at Beverly Farms, — Obers
and Haskells and Woodberrys and Williamses
and Larcoms, are pretty well snarled up as to

Page thirty-four

Old Days at Beoerly Farms

relationship, and I am always coming upon
some new relative in an odd way.

For instance, Miss Haven gave me the
other day the appraisal of my great grand-
father's estate, that same David Larcom
of slave times. He died in 1779 possessed of
£899 sterling, all in real estate. I found in
the appraisal and settlement among his chil-
dren, that my old friend Mrs. Lee and I have
probably a common ancestor, Jonathan Lar-
com. It amuses us, because we have never
before found any trace of commingling blood.
I fancy it would be pretty difficult to find any
two old Beverly Farmites, who are not related.
My principal pride in the old paper is that it
sets forth, over the signature of the Judge of
Probate in Ipswich, that a Larcom once was
worth about $5,000! (His brother's estate
was appraised at £219 15s. 6d. Ed.)

My good neighbor, Mrs. Goddard, came in
last evening and brought me a fragrant
bouquet of thyme and rosemary and marjoram
and sage, which makes me remember that I
have not yet tried to describe Aunt Betsey
Larcom 's garden in those ancient days.

Page thirty-five

Old Days at Beverly Farms

The striped grass is still growing in one
comer of my garden — the very same roots
that were there in my childhood, and up to a
year or so ago, the old Hlac bush that Uncle
Ed. Larcom picked blossoms from when he was
a small boy, was there too. Aunt Betsey's
garden was a beautiful combination of use
and loveliness. All along the stone wall
grew red-blossomed barm and in the long beds
were hyssop (she called it isop) and rue and
marigolds and catnip and camomile and sage
and sweet marjoram and martinoes. Mar-
tinoes were funny things with a beautiful,
ill-smelling bloom which looked like an orchid,
and when the blossoms dropped there succeeded
an odd shaped fruit, with spines and a long
tail, which was used for pickles. Then there
were king cups, a glorified buttercup, and a
lovely little blue flower called "Star of
Bethlehem" and four o 'clocks. Right here I
want to say that Frank Gaudreau has more
varieties of four o 'clocks than I ever supposed
were known to lovers of flowers and I
think he deserves the thanks of the village for
his pretty garden.

Page thirty-six

Old Days at Beverly Farms

All the different herbs were carefully gath-
ered by Aunt Betsey, and tied in bundles,
and hung up to the rafters of the old attic.
Sometimes I fancy I can smell them now on a
damp day, and I like to recall the dear old
lady in her tyer and cap, busy with her simples.
I like to think of her as my tutelar divinity
for I came to love her dearly, though I am
sure that when I was first landed in her house,
I was a big trial. Elsie Doane remembered
another garden of that time, where, she says,
they never picked a flower. I remember it too,
but I had forgotten that they didn't pick the
flowers. It flourished right where the engine
house and those other buildings stand, and
Elsie thinks the garden reached way out to
the sign post. Uncle Asa Ober owned that
garden — the ancestor of Mrs. Lee and Mrs.
Perkins and Mrs. Hooper and Helen Camp-
bell, and many others of our fast fading away
villagers. His two stepdaughters were cousins
to my mother, and they had a little shop in an
ell that ran from the house to the street, where
they did dressmaking and millinery.

Right in front of the shop was the garden

Page thirty -seven

Old Days at Beverly Farms

all fenced in, but I had the right of way for I
could sing! And whenever I learned a new
music from Joe Low's Singing School, I used
to be called in to act as prima donna to the
two ladies.

There were cucumbers in the garden exten-
sion and artichokes by the old walls.

But my regrets are not for the gardens.
We have gardens now, but nobody can bring
back the beautiful fields, stretching from the
woods to the sea, where cows and oxen grazed.
Nobody can bring back the brooks, now
polluted and turned into ditches. Nobody
can bring back the roadsides bordered with
wild roses, now tunneled and bean-poled out
of all beauty. I do love some of our summer
people, particularly those who have kept
their hands off and have not removed the old
landmarks, but I find it hard to forgive the
bean-poling and the cementing. Look at the
lovely old Sandy Hill Road (West Street).
Over these happy summer fields of the olden
days walked James Russell Lowell and his
beautiful betrothed, Maria White. Later he
came again, — but without her. Among those

Page thirty -eight

Old Days at Beverly Farms

old first visitors to our Shore were John Glen
King and Ellis Gray Loring. These two
gentlemen married sisters, southern women I
think; they took kindly to our New England
cookery. Mrs. King, one day, asked my
aunt, Mrs. Prince, if she could give them a
salt fish dinner, with an Essex sauce. Mrs-
Prince knew all about a salt fish dinner, but
the Essex sauce floored her, and she humbly
acknowledged her ignorance . "Oh ," said Mrs .
King, "it is very simple. You take thin
slices of fat pork and fry them out." Mrs.
Prince laughed and proceeded to her kitchen
to make "pork dip." Mrs. King also Uked a
steamed huckleberry pudding and she said
"And please, Mrs. Prince, make it all huckle-
berries, with just enough flour to hold them
together." We got four or five cents a quart
when we picked these same huckleberries. I
did not have a very big bank account in that
direction, owing to my short sight, and to my
preference for making com stalk fiddles with a
jack-knife. I remember making one on a
Sunday morning, uninterrupted by the "Sab-
bathday dog" which was supposed to lie in
wait for Sabbath breakers.

Page thirty -nine

Old Days at Beverly Farms

Diagonally opposite my house lived Mr.
Nathaniel Haskell, a little old gentleman, who
wore a cut away blue coat, with buttons on
the tail, over which, in cool weather, he put
a green baize jacket. How funny he looked.
He was interested in what he called the tar-iff,
and he was awfully afraid of lightning. I
remember the whole family filing into our
dining room whenever a specially dark cloud
appeared. I do not think a single descendant
of "Uncle Nat" is left here, tho' there was a
large family.

There was a cheese press in our back yard
and ' 'changing milk " was a great scheme . One
week all the milk from four or five farms would
be sent to us and my mother would make
delicious sage cheese.

Then, the next week all the milk would go
to "Uncle Nat's," and so on, till all the cow
owners were supplied with cheeses, which were
duly greased with butter and put on shelves
to dry, a sight to make the prophet smile.

I wish I could get a picture of Beverly
Farms as it looked to my child's eyes. I came
over to "the Road," as it was called by my

Page forty

Old Days at Bevcrln Farms

maternal relatives, when I was five years old.
They lived in that Paradise now occupied by
millionaries, the region that holds the Gordon
Dexter place, the Moore place, the Swift
place, and part of the Paine place. At that
time, the whole section was long green fields
bordered by woods, the "log brook" running
through it. There were then three roads in
Beverly Farms, the road now called Hale
Street, the beautiful old Sandy Hill Road
(West Street) and the Wenham road (Hart
Street). My two homes after my mother's
widowhood were at the Gordon Dexter place,
and at my father's old homestead, at Mingo's
Beach (where Bishop McVickar lived). There
were about twenty houses at that time, be-
tween Beach Hill and Saw Mill Brook. This
was West Farms and the Schoolhouse stood
just back of Pride's Crossing station — after-
wards removed to where it now stands as a
dwelling house, occupied by the heirs of Thomas
Pierce.

There was then no railroad and the main
road ran by Mr. Bradley's greenhouses, and
along where the railroad now is, coming out

Page forty-one

Old Days at Beverly Farms

near the schoolhouse. That part of Hale
Street where the Catholic church is, was then
Miller's Hill, a pasture, where I have often
tried to pick berries. The railroad came in
1845. The little shanties where the laborers
who were building the road lived temporarily
with their families, were a great curiosity. I
used to run away and peep into them and I can
remember how they smelled. My mother,
who did the work of twenty women every day
almost as long as she lived, made knotted
"comforters" for these shanties. Our way of
getting to Beverly and Salem was by stage
coaches between Gloucester and Salem. In
my few journeys in these delightful convey-
ances I used to clamber to the top seat and
sit with Mr. Page the kindly driver, who was
one of our first conductors on the railroad.

To the house where I now live my happy
life, I was brought at five years. I could
then read about as well as I can now. I found
in this old house a garret, a beautiful garret,
where bundles of herbs hung from the rafters,
and where books, books galore had collected in
old sea chests. Fancy my delight, at finding,

Page forty-two

Old Dags at Beverly Farms

one red letter day, Christopher North's,
"Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life."

There were other books not so well fitted
for the education of a child, but it was all fish
that came to my net, and I calmly read up
to my tenth year, "The Criminal Calendar,"
"Tales of Shipwrecks," Barber's "Historical
Massachusetts," Paley's "Moral Philosophy,"
Pollock's "Course of Time," Alleine's "Alarm
to the Unconverted," Richardson's "Pamela"
and the ' 'Spectator ! ' ' Some years afterwards,
when I had read the covers off this miscella-
neous collection of books, some of the earlier
summer people, the elder Lorings and Kings,
I think, put a small library into Uncle Pride's
house and gave us Jacob Abbott's Rollo
Stories and a few other delights. Please
picture to yourself the "light of other days"
by which the reading and sewing and knitting
of old Beverly Farms used to go on at night.

Luckily, there was as much daylight then,
as now. The lamp that illuminated my
childish evenings was a glass lamp, that held
about a cup full of whale oil, "sperm oil," it
was called . There were two metal tubes at the

Page forty-three

Old Days at Beverlif Farms

top of this lamp, thro' which protruded two
cotton wicks. These wicks could be pulled up
for more light or pulled down for economy, by-
means of a pin. No protection whatever was
afforded from the flame, and my hair was
singed in front most of the time, as I crept close
with book or stocking, to this illumination.
One use of the old oil lamp was medicinal.
If there were a croupy child in the house, he
might be treated immediately, in the absence
of a doctor, to a dose from the lamp on the
mantel- I remember my blessed brother
David being ministered unto in that way.
After this, came the fluid lamp, with an
alcoholic mixture that was dangerous,but clean.
In hunting about among ancestors, I am
sometimes reminded of the story of Dr. Samuel
Johnson's marriage. The lady to whom he
proposed, demurred a little. She said she had
an uncle who was hanged. Dr. Johnson
assured her that that need make no difficulty,
for he had no doubt that he had several who
ought to have been hanged. I remember my
disgust at finding that I was related thro' my
maternal grandmother, Molly Standley, to

Page forty-four

Old Days at Beverly Farms

"Aunt Massy." Aunt Massy, (her real name
was Mercy) was a mildly insane, gray-haired,
stoutish woman, who lived just before you
reach the fountain at the top of the hill, on
Hale St. There was a well with a windlass
and bucket at one side of her old house and
Aunt Massy used to lean on the well curb and
abuse the passers by. She remembered all
the mean things one's relatives ever did, and
how she could scold! I was often sent to Mr.
Perry's grocery store where Pump Cottage
now stands and I lised to try to get by with-
out hearing her uplifted voice. But if I had
a new gown there was no escape.

The two districts I have mentioned, (East
and West Farms) were divided by "Saw
Mill Brook," the little half choked stream that
now filters under the road between Mr.
Hardy's and Mr. Simpkins' places. It was a
beautiful brook in those old days, clear water
running through fields, with trout in it. The
saw mill must have stood about where that
collection of tenement houses now is.

The "child in the mill pond" belongs to
the legendary history of Beverly Farms.

Page forty-five

Old Days at Beverly Farms

Coming down the hill towards Beverly, the
most terrible shrieks would often be heard, but
if one crossed the brook to West Farms, all was
silent. I never heard these shrieks, I took
good care never to be caught over there after
dark. I should have liked to see the little
screech owl, who, no doubt, had his quiet home
up back of the mill, and sang his evening song,
after the miller had closed his gates. We
villagers have a question to propose to all our
friends of uncertain age, — "Do you remember
the saw-mill ? " If, inadvertently, they confess
to its acquaintance, it settles the question of
age. It is as good as a Family Bible.

Miss Culbert showed me the other day, a
great find, the remnant of the "Third Social
Library of Beverly." I had never heard of
such a library and was greatly interested. It
is now in our beautiful branch library, in a
neat book case made by one of the Obers, in
whose house the Library was placed. I mean
the old Joseph Ober house which stood
where Mrs. Charles M. Cabot's house is.

Elsie did not live opposite that house then,
but she was going to live there. I dare say

J age forty-six

Old Days at Beverly Farms

she wouldn't read any one of those books, any
more than I would. The books date back to
1810, and many of the honored names I have
been mentioning are there, all written down in
beautiful handwriting, and with a tax of ten
cents opposite their names, for the carrying
on of this little library. There are two ser-
mons of the beloved Joseph Emerson, who
preached at Beverly before there was any
church here, a funeral sermon preached on
the occasion of Dr. Perry's grandfather's
death, loads of sermons by Jonathan Edwards,
great bundles of religious magazines, and
other interesting antiquities. Not one story,
no fiction of any sort. Those forefathers of
ours fed on strong meat. Among the curiosi-
ties are several letters from anxious fathers in
Boston, making the most vigorous and pathetic
protest against a proposed second theatre in
Boston on Common Street.

A second theatre in Boston! The souls of
young people in peril! One sighs to think
what these good fathers would have said if
they could have pulled aside the curtain of the
future and seen little Beverly with crowds of

Page forty-seven

Old Days at Beverly Farms

children accompanied by their fathers and
mothers and uncles and aunts and cousins, all
pouring into the "movies!" (One of these
movies named for Lucy Larcom!) One must
go on, and now we are trying to hope that some
good may come out of the "movies!" If our
little religious library was the "Third Social"
there must have been two more in old Beverly.
I want you to go back in your mind to a Sun-
day of that time when even a walk to the woods
or to the beach was wicked, when the only
books that were proper to read were religious
books, when there were three religious ser-
vices every Sunday and pretty awfully long
services. My cousin and my sister and I
crawled up a long ladder to the third floor of
our bam, among the pigeons' nests, and,
nestling down in the hay, produced a novel,
a real novel, a wishy washy thing, that no
money could hire me to read today, and with
quiet whisperings read that wicked book.
We were in mortal terror lest "Aunt Phebe"
should suspect our deep degradation, and
"Aunt Phebe" was not a foe either. She was
a beautiful, big, kindly woman, as Mrs.

Page forty-eight

Old Days at Beverly Parms

Crowell, her step-daughter, would gladly
attest.

One whose memory goes back like Elsie
Doane's and mine must remember the old
brick meeting house. My memories of it are
pretty hazy and I fancy Elsie will have to go
farther back than her mother, for information
about that fine specimen of architecture. It
had neither cupola nor spire and must have
been pretty ugly. It must have been the
second meeting house, in which I recall the
beautiful alto Mrs. Otis Davis's mother used
to sing. I shall never forget how affected my
childish ears were when she sang "Oh, when
thou city of my God shall I thy Courts ascend"
as the choir rendered the anthem "Jerusalem."

Speaking of meeting houses, our third and
present, one of the most beautiful and "resting"
buildings one could worship God in, is a lasting
memorial of the taste and genius of our
beloved Mrs. Whitman. To her and to Mr.
Eben Day, we owe its beauty; and to the
generous old church members we owe its
existence at all, for they gave freely to its
construction.

Page forty-nine

Old Days at Beverly Parms

The first minister I have much recollection
of was Mr. Hale, who lived with his family in
the house now owned by Miss Lizzie Hull.
My step-father bought a horse from him, and
named him "Sumner." That was Mr. Hale's
Christian name. I have often wondered how
Mr. Hale felt to have a horse named for him,
but I am sure Uncle David meant it as a
compliment.

In those far away days we had a hermit of
our own. It would be more damaging to a
claim of youthfulness, on the part of my
readers to remember "Johnny Widgin," than
to remember the saw-mill.

One late afternoon, coming out with my
playmates from Mr. Gordon Dexter's avenue,
then my grandfather's lane, we saw a most
grotesque figure, standing by "Rattlesnake
Rock," just across the railroad — a tall man,
of perhaps fifty years, to us, of course, "an old
man." His trousers, which, thro' all the
years I perfectly remember, were of some kind
of once white material, with little bows of red
ribbon and silk sewed all over them. He
spoke to us gently but we were all terrified and

Page fifty

Old Days at Beverly Farms

ran home as fast as our legs could carry us.
This singular being afterwards came and went
in the village for several years, cooking his
own little vile smelling messes on kindly dis-
posed women's stoves, sleeping in bams,
repeating chapter after chapter of the Old
Testament for the edification of his hearers,
and always gentle and kindly. I recall his
recitation of the last chapter of Malachi
beginning "And they shall all bum like an
oven." He was, no doubt, mildly insane and
of Scandinavian descent, but nobody ever knew
anything definite about him. He lived a part
of his time, in warm weather, in a hole or cave
of rocks, on the beach formerly owned by Mr.
Samuel T. Morse, below Colonel Lee's. He had
a similar retreat at York Beach. He finally
faded out of our lives, no one knew how.
He may have been taken up in a chariot of
fire like his beloved prophet Elijah, for all that
any of us ever knew of his departure from
these earthly scenes. He was supposed to be
Norwegian, hence his name "Johnny Wid-
gin." My grandfather said that if he could
not pronounce "the thick of my thumb" in

Page fifty-one

Old Days at Beverti; Parms

any way but the "tick of my tumb" he was
Norwegian. That settled it in my mind, for
my grandfather was my oracle. (Andrew
Larcom, Grandfather Ober had died, Ed.)

My grandfather did not go much to church
but he loved his Bible and Psalm book and
from several things that I remember about
him, I think he was Unitarian in belief, though
in those days I did not know a Unitarian from
a black cat, and whenever I heard of one, I
supposed he must be a terrible kind of being.
I was a grown woman, when one day, speaking
of Starr King and his love for the White Hills
and his loyalty in keeping California in the
Union during the Civil War, the woman to
whom I was speaking said "Well, he wasn't a
good man." "Not a good man," I said.
"Why" said she, "You know he was a Univer-
salist." We have got on a little since that
time in toleration, but we need to get on a
little more.

My uncles on my mother's side were great
hunters. Foxes and minks and woodchucks
were plentiful in those days and a good many
of them fell into my uncles' traps. I remember

Page Jifty-two

Old Days at Beverlij Farms

remonstrating with my uncle "Ed Larcom,"
about traps, telling him it was cruel, and that
I didn't see how a good kind man like him
could earn his living that way. "Oh" he
said, "They were made for me!" Doesn't the
Bible say "And he shall have dominion over
the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the
air, and over all the cattle, and over every
living thing that creepeth upon the earth?"
My uncles all said there was no better eating
than a good fat woodchuck; that the chucks
fed on grain and roots and clean things. The
manner of cooking was to parboil them, stuff
with herbs and bake.

Some years ago, I was invited to join the
Daughters of the Revolution, and to this end
to look up my ancestry. To my surprise I
could not find a single forbear of mine who
was connected in any way with wars or ru-
mors of wars, and I reported that I hadn't
been able to find any of my kin who ever
wanted to kill anything but a woodchuck.
Since this writing, my cousin. Dr. Abbott,
still living, at the age of ninety-five in Illinois,
has informed me that my remote ancestor,

Page fifty-three

Old Days at Beverly Farms

Benjamin Ober, did valiant work on the sea in
the Revolution.

Elsie Doane seems to think that these scraps
of antiquity would not be quite satisfactory
without mention of "Jim" Perry's grocery
store, though she never bought a pound of
coffee in it, and, if she says she did, she thinks
she is her mother. It was our only store and
so was quite a feature. It was presided over
by Mr. James Perry, a tall dignified man,
whom his wife in her various offices as help-
mate, always called **Mr. Perry." Mr. Perry
was color blind and whenever my mother sent
me for blue silk or blue yam, he always
selected green or purple.

You may wonder how blue silk comes to be
a grocery product, but this was really a depart-
ment store. When we had a half cent coming
to us, Mrs. Perry always produced a needle,
for the exact change. You see how honest
we were ! This honest department store stood ,
in fact it was Pump Cottage, for I think
Pump Cottage is the same old jackknife with
different blades and handles. Farther up, on
the Wenham Road, lived Deacon Joseph

Page fifty-four

Old Days at Beverly Farms

Williams, a beautiful old gentleman, with a dis-
position as sunny as a ripe peach. His house
was small and his family large. All the Wil-
liamses in this region would look back to
that little house as their old family homestead,
and I was sorry when Mr. Doane decided
that it could not be remodelled, but had to be
taken down.

Deacon Williams had a dog, a little black
fellow named Carlo, who always followed the
good man about except on Sundays. On
Sundays, Carlo took a look at his master and
then went and lay down dejectedly. But, as
I have intimated before, when you remember
the Sundays of those days, a sensible dog
really had the best of it. In a former page of
these odds and ends of memory I have men-
tioned Uncle Ed Larcom and his fondness for
hunting. A good many of us aborigines of
old Beverly Farms will remember his talks of
his dog Tyler, a mongrel dog, half bull dog and
half Newfound/anrf, as Uncle Ed pronounced
it. Tyler, according to his master (and his
master was the most accurate teller of stories
that ever lived, always telling his yarns in ex-

Page fifty-five

Old Days at Beverly Farms

actly the same words,) was a most remarkable
dog, understanding what one said to him
as well as a man, going a mile if he were merely
told to fetch a missing jacket, and as full of
fun and tricks as a monkey. Uncle Ed used
to delight his young audiences with anecdotes
of Tyler, and in his old age, when mind and
memory began to fail, it was rather hard to
hear him say, "Did I ever tell you about my
dog Tyler?"

He must have been named for John Tyler.
It was hard on a good dog to be named for
John Tyler, one of the poorest presidents we
ever had.

There seems to be a great deal of interest
among our summer people in the old houses
still left at Beverly Farms. I have mentioned
the James Woodbury house now owned by
Mr. J. S. Curtis; another very old house is the
William Haskell house, owned by Mr. Gordon
Dexter. I have a little doubt as to whether
the date on the house is right. I have a very
strong impression that Aunt Betsey Larcom,
bom Haskell, told me in my childhood that
her father built the house in which Aunt Betsey

Page ftfly-six

Old Days at Beverly Farms

was bom, in 1775. She also said that when
they dug the well back of the house, they struck
a spring and were never able to finish stoning it,
a fact which accounted for its never running
dry, when all the other wells in the village gave
out. I think Mr. Dexter bought it of the
James Haskell heirs, but I am not able to
state what relation James Haskell (Skipper
Jim) was to Mr. William Haskell, or how he
came into possession of it.

I wonder how many people are now left in
Beverly Farms who ever tasted food cooked in
a brick oven. I am sure there are not many.
But those of us who ate of an Indian pudding
or a pot of baked beans from that ancient
source of supply will never forget the delicious-
ness of that kind of cookery.

The pudding would stand straight up in its
earthen pan, a quivering red, honey-combed
mass, surrounded with a sea of juice to be
eaten with rich real cream in clots of loveliness.
The beans would be brown and whole, with
the crisp home cured pork on top. That old
New England cookery, it seems to me, filled a
big bill for health and physical nourishment.

Page fifty-seven

Old Days at Beverly Farms

We did not know much about proteins and
calories and fibrins, in fact, we had never
heard of them. But we somehow hit upon
the best combinations as to taste and effi-
ciency. We almost never had candy, and we
rarely had all flour bread. A good deal
of Indian meal went into my mother's
bread.

Our amusements in those days were primi-
tive enough. On Old Election Day, which
came the last Wednesday in May, there was
just one thing to do. We youngsters had an
election cake all shining with molasses on top,
and raisins in the middle, and we went down
to the beach and dug wells in the sand. Now
and then we hunted Mayflowers (saxifrage)
and played about the old fort left from the
Revolution and now owned by Mr. F. L.
Higginson. Evenings we had parties and
played Copenhagen and hunt the slipper or
knit the family stockings by our dim oil
lamps. Winters, there were singing schools.
Those were great larks if we came at the
money to buy a copy of the "Carmina Sacra,"
or the "Shawm." I still think they were

Page fifty-eight

Old Days at Beverly Farms

fine collections of tunes, comprising all the
old standbys. Mrs. Lee's father, Mr. John
Knowlton, was a wonderful singing master,
and a great disciplinarian, with a beautiful
bass voice. He would stand a good deal of
fun at the recess, but when Mr. Knowlton
struck his bell and took up his violin, we all
knew it meant singing and no nonsense. I
think my grandfather, Benjamin Ober, and
Elsie's great-grandfather, Deacon David Lar-
com, were also singing masters in the old
days, but neither Elsie nor I remember them,
— old as we are.

Over "t'other side," as we called it, in the
house now owned by Mr. J. S. Curtis, lived
Uncle "Jimmy" Woodbury. He must have
been a "character." He was once very much
troubled by rats in his barn. So he conceived
a plan for getting rid of them at his neighbor's
expense. Uncle David Preston's estate, where
Miss Susan Amory's house now stands, was
diagonally opposite.

Uncle "Jimmy" wrote a letter to the rats,
in which he told them that in Uncle David's
barn was more corn and better corn than they

Page fifty-nine

Old Days at Beverlij Farms

were getting in his bam, and he strongly-
recommended that they move. Then Uncle
Jimmy kept watch and on a beautiful moon-
light night he had the satisfaction of beholding
a long line of rodents with an old gray fellow
as leader, crossing the road on their way to
Uncle David's. (I tell the story as it was told
to me). Uncle Jimmy's daughter, Mary,
married Dr. Wyatt C. Boyden, for many years
the skilful family physician of half the town.
The fine public spirited Boydens of Beverly
are her descendants.

By the way, the old vernacular of the
village ought not to perish from the earth.
It was unique. Our ancestors just hated to
pronounce any word correctly, even when they
were fairly good scholars and spellers. They
called a marsh a "mash." Capt. Timothy
Marshall, the rich man of the place, was called
Capt. "Mashall"; Mr. Osborne was Mr.
"Osman";theObers were "Overs", a lilac was
a "laylock" a blue jay was a blue "gee," etc.

In closing these rambling papers of the old
days at Beverly Farms, my conscience accuses
me a little of not sufficiently emphasizing

Page sixty

Old Days at Beverly Farms

the virtues of the villagers. Truly, they
were a good, interesting, law-abiding, religious
people. Everybody went to church; a tramp
was unknown; a drunken person was nearly as
much an astonishment as a circus would have
been. It would be unfair to class them as
rude fishermen and shoemakers for they came
of the old Puritan ancestry, who built their
churches and schoolhouses on a convenient
spot, before they attended to anything else,
and they paid their debts so promptly that
Mr. William Endicott, the good merchant of
Beverly, said that he never had any hesitation
in selling on credit to "Farms" people. As
one got on to middle life, almost every house-
holder had his horse, his cows and often a yoke
of oxen. Our favorite conveyance to school,
in deep snows, was an ox team with poles on
the sides of the sled, where we held on with
shouts and screams of laughter.

Nobody thought of hiring a nurse in cases
of serious illness. The neighbors came with
willing hands and helped out. It was a
peaceful little hamlet, with kind, straight-
forward, honest inhabitants, and the small

Page sixty-one

Old Days at Beverly Farms

remnant of us who are left have reason to be
proud of our ancestry.

Elsie repeated to us, the other day, the
epitaph on her great-grandfather's grave
stone, the Deacon David Larcom, who built
my old house, who asked the town for a
cemetery for this village and was laid to rest
there in 1840, the first one to be buried in its
peaceful shadows: "His life exhibited in
rare combination and in an uncommon degree
all the excellencies of the husband, the father,
the citizen and the Christian."

The epitaph was written by Lucy Larcom,
whose home here was on West Street. After
she left Beverly for Lowell, and was a factory
girl, she wrote for the "Lowell Offering," a
little magazine published by the nice New
England working girls. Copies of this little
magazine were in the wonderful attic of my
house when I came here. They were probably
scented with Aunt Betsey's simples that
hung from the roof.

How I wish I could have foreseen how very
precious they would be to me now.

Page sixty-two

Head enlarged from a group taken about 1899

LUCY LARCOM — A MEMORY

By Mary Larcom Dow

Extracts from the Beacon, published in Beverly
for a charity November 1, 1913.

I am proud to be asked to record some of
my pleasant days with my mother's cousin,
Lucy Larcom. It will, of course, be natural
to me to speak principally of the six or seven
years during which she lived at Beverly
Farms, the only time in which she had a real
home of her own. It has always seemed
strange to me that Doctor Addison in his
biography of her, should have dismissed that
part of her life with so few words. I know
that it meant a great deal to her.

My very first recollection of her was as a
child, when she, as a young lady, came to my
house (then owned by "Aunt Betsey") spoken
of so affectionately in "A New England
Girlhood." Afterward, when I bought the
old house, she expressed her great pleasure
and when I told her I had spent all my money

Pag^ sixty-three

Lucy Larcom — A Memory

for it, she said that was quite right; it was
like the turtle with his shell, a retreat.

When she came here in 1866, she was in
her early forties, a beautiful, gracious figure,
with flowing abundant brown hair, and a
most benignant face. She was then editor
of "Our Young Folks." She took several
sunny rooms near the railroad station, almost
opposite "The witty Autocrat." He dated
his letters from "Beverly Farms by the
Depot," not to be outdone by his Manchester
neighbors. The house was then owned by
Captain Joseph Woodberry, a refined gentle-
man of the old school.

She brought with her at first, to these
pleasant rooms, a favorite niece who resembled
her in looks and in temperament, and she at
once proceeded, with her exquisite taste, to
make a real home for them. The bright fire
on the hearth where we sat and talked and
watched the logs fall apart and the sparks
go out, was a great delight to her, and I have
always thought that that beautiful poem
"By the Fireside" must have been written
"in those days."

Page sixty-four

Lucij Larcom — A Memory

The woods and fields of Beverly Farms
were then accessible to all of us, and she knew
just where to find the first hepaticas and the
rare spots where the linnea grew, and the
rhodora and the arethusa, and that last pa-
thetic blossom of the year, the witch hazel,
and she could paint them too.

To this home by the sea, came noted people;
Mary Livermore, Celia Thaxter, whose sea-
swept poems were our great delight, and
many others. I recall one great event when
Mr. Whittier came and took tea. He was so
gentle and simple. The conversation turned
on the softening of religious creeds, and he
gave us some of his own experiences. He
told us that when Charles Kingsley came to
America, he went to see him at the Parker
House, and as they walked down School
Street, Mr. Whittier expressed his apprecia-
tion to Mr. Kingsley for his work in that
direction. Mr. Kingsley laughed and said, —
"Why, when I first went to preach at Evers-
ley, I had great difficulty in making my
parishioners believe that God is as good as
the average church member."

Page sixty-fwe

Lucy Larcom — A Memory

There was a comfortable lounge in the
living room at Beverly Farms, by an east
window, and by that window was written
"A Strip of Blue."

I do not think that Lucy Larcom had a
very keen sense of humor, but she enjoyed
fun in others, and was always amused at my
absurd exaggerations and at my brother
David's comical sea yams. This brother of
mine strongly resembled her in face and build,
and also in his determination not to be poor.
They would be rich, and they were rich to
the end of the chapter. Her income must
have been always slender, but I do not think
I ever heard her say she could not afford any-
thing. If she wanted her good neighbor, Mr.
Josiah Obear, to harness up his red horse and
rock-away and take her about the country-
side, she said so, and we would go joyfully
off, coming home, perhaps from the Essex
fields, with a box of strawberries for her sim-
ple supper. Always the simple life with
nature was her wish.

She was decidedly old-fashioned, and though
I do not suppose she thought plays and cards

Page sixty-six

Lucy Larcom — A Memory

and dancing wicked, she had still a little
shrinking from them. I remember that now
and then we played a game called rounce, a
game as innocent and inane as "Dumb Mug-
gins" but she always had a little fear that
Captain Woodberry would discover it, which
pleased me immensely.

Those pleasant days at Beverly Farms
came too soon to an end, and for the last
part of her life I did not see so much of her.
She remains to me a loving and helpful mem-
ory of a serene and child -like nature, and
"a glad heart without reproach or blot," and
I am glad to lay this witch hazel flower of
memory upon the grave of that daughter of
the Puritans, Lucy Larcom.

Page sixty-seven

Letter^

Beverly Farms,

April 25, 1893.
My dear Miss Baker:

I get such pleasant letters from you that I
quite love you, though I dare say I should
not know you if I met you in my porridge dish
being such a short sighted old party. And
liking you, when you joined those other des-
pots and lie awake o' nights, thinking how
you can pile up more work and make life a
burden to school ma'ams, means a good deal! !

Here is Miss Fanny Morse, now, whom I
have always considered a Christian and a
philanthropist, commissioning me to count
and destroy belts of caterpillars' eggs for which
the children are to have prizes!

The children indeed! The prizes are at the
wrong end! Miss Wilkins and I come home
nights — "meeching" along — ^our arms full
of the twigs — from which the nasty worms
are beginning to crawl !

And now come you, asking for a tree! Yes,
yes, dear body, we will do our possible, only
if you hear of my raiding somebody's bam
yard for the necessary nourishment of said

Page sixly-eighi

Letters

tree, or stealing a wheelbarrow or a pick and
shovel, please think of me at my best.

Now as to Mr. Dow, I must write his part
seriously, I suppose, as he is a grave old
Scotchman.

He says he will use a part of the money —
after proper consultation with the selectmen,
etc. And he suggests that a part of the money
be used to take care of the triangle and the
trees already planted. He will write you
when he has decided where to put additional
trees. And if I live through the week I will
write you whether we got a '92 tree in any-
where.

Yours very much,

Mary L Dow.

Miss Baker was Secretary of the Beverly
Improvement Society; these letters refer to
her work. — (Editor.)

Page sixty-nine

Letters

Beverly Farms,
March 21, 1899
My Dear Miss Baker:

I want very much to go to Mrs. Gidding's
high tea but I do not get out of school till 3.30
and the train leaves at 3.34.

But after I am graduated from a school, for
good and all, I mean to go to some of the rest
of these "feasts of reason and flow of soul."
We are making fine progress with the wurrums
and Miss Wilkins is prospering with her enter-
prise in Wenham.

Yours truly

Mary L. Dow.

P.S. My regards to your father. I am
sorry he has been ill. I told my sub-com-
mittee that I thought, if Mr. Baker had been
present when my resignation was accepted,
they would have sent me some little pleasant
message to remember. It seemed to me that
after teaching about a century in the town
they might have at least told me to go to the
d , or something of that sort. M.L.D.

Page seventy

Letters

'•Beverly Farms-by-the-Depot" 1918.
Dearly Beloved G. P. :

"Pink" has just brought me this little
squigley piece of paper, so that my letter to
you may be of the same size as hers — some
people are so fussy. You sent me nine or ten
bushels of love, and I have used them all up,
and am hungry for more, for that kind of diet
my appetite is always unappeased.

How I do wish we had you within touching
distance as well as within loving distance; I
have always had a great desire to see more of
you since first my eyes fell upon you. I do
just hate to get so old that perhaps I shall
never see you again in the flesh. But I'll be
sure to look for you, and now and then, when
you get a particularly good piece of good luck,
— I shall have had something to do with it.
That does not mean that the undertaker has
been called and to hear James and Sarah
Elizabeth talk, you would suppose that noth-
ing could kill me — I only mean that 84 years
is serious; but, for the life of me, I never do get
very serious for long at a time.

Jimmy and I have been out to Northfield

Page seventy-one

Letters

for five days, went to meeting and sang psalms
for seven hours a day. Jimmy takes to meet-
ings, being as Huxley said of somebody "incur-
ably religious" — and really I did not talk much.

The country was so sweet and beautiful,
the spirit of the place was like the New Jerusa-
lem come down again. We slept in the dormi-
tory in the little iron beds side by side, "Each
in his narrow bed forever laid", only we did
not stay forever.

We meant to come home by way of the
Monadnock region, and we had a few drives
along the Contacook River, but we ran into a
Northeaster, and came ingloriously home.

Have not you been in lovely places, and in
great good fortune in your vacation? I am
glad of it.

I love you — so does Jimmy — and Sambo,
and so would Billy, the neighbors' dog, who
hangs about me for rice and kidneys, if he
knew you. As to Pink, she flourishes like a
green bay horse, teaches French and is in good
spirits. Molly goes away on a vacation to-
morrow. Poor Jim! With us for cooks!

Remember him in your prayers.

Thine, thine, Molly Polly.

Page seventy-two

Letters

Beverly Farms.

Jan. 25, 1919.
My Dear Mrs. Goddard:

I didn't know till the other day, when I
accidentally met Mr. Hakanson, that you
had had an anxious and worried time this
winter, with Mr. Goddard in the hospital.
I am glad to know that he is able to be at home
now. Tell him with my love, that our old
neighbor, Mrs. Goodwin, once broke her leg,
and she told me that though she expected to
be always lame, that in a year she could not
remember which leg was broken.

I hope you and the boys have been well, in
this winter of worries. As to ice, I am
scared to death of it, nothing else ever keeps
me in the house.

My old assistant at school, declares that
one winter she dragged me up and down
Everett St., every school day! Nothing like
the quietness of this winter at Beverly Farms
was ever seen. I think I must suggest to the-
Beacon St. people to come down. We have

Page seventy-three

Letters

had a gcxxi many dark days, but now and
then, I lie in my bed and watch the sun come
up and glorify the oaks on your hill.

And then I quote to "Jim" Emerson's lines:
"Oh! tenderly the haughty day
Fills his blue urn with fire."

And he likes that about as well as he likes
the stars in the middle of the night!

By the way, we are thinking of going to
Colorado and Florida next month for a few
weeks. We have got the bits in our teeth,
though we may have to go to the City Home
when we get back. We mean to try the
month of March in warmer climes. We
haven't anything to wear — but that does not
matter.

Miss Miller comes down now and then,
always serene, though what she finds in the
inlook or the outlook is difficult to see.
Serenity in her case, does not depend on
outward circumstances.

God bless you all, and we shall be glad to
see our kind sensible neighbors back.
Affectionately,

Mary L. Dow.

Page seventy-four

Letters .^

My Dear Mrs. Goddard:

I told the nice young person at your door,
that I hoped I should some day soon see your
dear face, and so I do hope. But I under-
stand all your busy moments, and you
understand my limitations, my having been
bom so many years ago; and we both know
what fine women we both be, and that's all
about it!

Then there never was such a salad as
we had for our fourth of July dinner.
And I did have a little real oil, too good for
any hawked about stuff. I put it right on to
those dear little onions, and that happy
looking lettuce! And that isn't all about
that, for there are still carrots — gentle and
sweet — for our tomorrow's lunch. I told
"Jim" they were good for the disposition and
he said he didn't need carrots for his! Men
are awfully conceited. And I am so pleased
to see Mr. Goddard a'walking right off,
without a limp to his name. James and Miss
Miller send love, and so do I, while the
beautiful hill holds you and always.

Mary Larcom Dow.
Monday, July 7, 1919.

Page seventy-five

Letters

Mrs. Dow wrote to a California friend,
Mrs. Gertrude Payne Bridgeford, a short
time before her death:

"I'd give my chance of a satin gown to see
you, and I hope I shall live to do that, but if
I don't, remember that I love you always,
here or there, and I quote here my favorite
verse from Weir Mitchell,
'Yes, I have had dear Lord, the day.
When, at thy call, I have the night.
Brief be the twilight as I pass
From light to dark, from dark to light.' "
Her prayer was answered for the twilight
was brief.

Page seventy-six

Letters

Dear Elsie :

As soon as Mary said "E. Sill" — I found
the Fool's Prayer directly.

It was in my mind and would not stay out.
How well it expresses that our sins are often
not so bad as our blunders! A splendid
prayer for an untactful person. Perhaps I
should not go so far as to say that want of tact
is as bad as want of virtue — but it is pretty
bad! From that defect, you will go scot free!
But I often blunder.

Your TAT is here, I am keeping it as a host-
age.

Thine,

Your Old Schoolma'am.

Friday, April 9, 1920.

Page seeventy-seven

Letter.

EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS

"Wouldn't it be lovely if one could fall-
like a leaf from a tree?"

"Longevity is the hardest disease in the
world to cure, you are beat from the start,
and get worse daily!"

"Ah, dear, sometimes I wish — almost wish

— I did not love life so well! But I try to
think that if it is not a long dreamless sleep
bye and bye, that I shall take right hold of
that other existence and love it too!"^

And speaking of Mr. Dow's serious illness
she wrote:

"I try to believe that God will not take him
first — and leave me with no sun in the sky

— nor bird in the bush — no flower in the
grass."

Page seventy-eight

APPRECIATION

BY

SARAH E. MILLER

It was in the autumn of 1872 that I first
met my friend, Mary Larcom Ober, at
Wilmington, North Carolina, where we were
teaching in the same school.

In the spring of 1873, she invited me to her
home in Beverly Farms.

How well I remember that first happy visit
to beautiful Beverly Farms, and the first
walk in its woods. We went through the
grounds of the Haven estate and then to
Dalton's hill which has such a fine outlook.

From that time my friend's home held a
welcome for me whenever I chose to come,
and the welcome lasted till the close of her life.

What a hospitality, rest and peace there
was in the dear "house by the side of the
road," and a never-failing kindness and
love . What cheer at Thanksgiving and Christ-
mas festivals when friends and neighbors came
in to bring greetings, and stayed for friendly
chat or a game of cards.

Page seventy-nine

A ppreciation bij Sarah E. Miller

In the first years of our friendship, I made
close acquaintance with the woods of Beverly
Farms, for we lived our summer afternoons
mostly out of doors in those days. We had
two favorite places under the trees, one, on a
little hill deep in the pines, the other, with
glimpses of the sea, and we took our choice
of these from day to day.

Here in the company of books, birds and
squirrels we used to sit, read and sew till
the last beams of sunlight crept up to the
tops of the pines, then gathered up books
and work and went home.

I learned much of book-lore in those days
from my friend, much also of wood-lore.
She knew the places where the spring flowers
were hidden, hepeticas, violets, blood-root,
the nodding columbines, and all the others,
and we searched them out together.

The memory of those first years at Beverly

Farms, and of all the following years are

among the most precious possessions that I

hold.

S.E.M.

Page eighty

EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS
WRITTEN TO MR. DOW

From Mrs. Cora Haynes Crosby:

"I have known and loved her, our dear
wonderful friend who has left us, ever since I
can remember, and what a friend she has been.

Not only was she dear to father and mother,
but just as precious with her great, noble,
beautiful spirit to all of us younger ones, for
she was no older than we.

That happy outlook on life, her love of

everything beautiful and fine in nature, books

and people, made her an inspiration to all who

knew her."

From a letter by Mrs. Margaret Haynes Pratt:

"Ever since I was a little girl, Molly has
been almost a member of our household. As
a child, her visits were as much a joy to me
as to mother and father.

I never thought of her as old, even then —
and a child generally marks off the years in
relentless fashion, for Molly was always young
to me, as she must have been to everyone
who knew her.

It is wonderful to have had a nature that
so helps all who knew her to believe that life
is immortal."

Page eighty-one

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