Kingston has two buildings on the National Register of Historic Places: the Frederic C. Adams Library and the Major John Bradford House, as well as a National Historic District, which includes the area around Main and Green Streets. For a listing of National Register sites in Plymouth County, and elsewhere, see Wikimedia’s list.
Major John Bradford house, rear view with well, 1921. By Emily Fuller Drew
Old Home Day is a small town New England tradition popular from the 1860s into the 1930s, and later in many cases. In Kingston, the town-wide event, which included clambakes, sports, dancing, singing and parades, was held annually from 1903 to 1908, again from 1933 to 1938, in the 1970s and the 1990s.
This month’s exhibit features programs and photos from some of these events.
And the tradition continues on September 8, Kingston’s new Old Home Day! To get involved, contact the Board of Selectmen now.
Working on a box of photographs recently, I pulled this out of an acid-free envelope.
Man sitting in a doorway, no date
Sometimes a photograph just catches your eye, and the sharp detail and rough textures of this doorway got mine, but the description “Unidentified man in doorway” left the subject of this portrait an orphan of history.
Some dozens of photographs later in the same box, I found this one.
Eben Plimpton in doorway at Silver Lake, no date
It’s the same doorway, with the same tool leaning in the same spot against the same shingles. But is it the same unidentified man? No, this man is known, well-known in fact. And the very next photo in the box shows that they are in fact two different people.
Eben Plimpton and two men, Silver Lake in background, no date
According to his obituary in the Boston Daily Globe (4/13/1915), the “famous actor” — one of the first to move from success on the legitimate stage to vaudeville — was originally Eben Bradlee, “born in the first house west of the State House on Beacon St., Boston, Feb. 7, 1853.” Plympton (sometimes Plimpton) began acting as an amateur while working as a bookkeeper, a career that “overtaxed his strength” leading him to recuperate in California. There he took his first professional acting job in Sacramento, followed by successes in San Francisco, then back east in New York and Boston, and on to England and to Europe. After leading and supporting roles alongside “most of the distinguished stars since 1880,” Plympton died in a New York hotel of pneumonia, after nine days of illness and a longer period of poor health.
The obituary further explains why the Local History Room has these photos of Plympton: “About 1880, he established a farm home on Silver Lake…which he called ‘The Grange’.” The estate had a private gunning stand, an orchard and extensive gardens. In subsequent summers, he played farmer on his 40 acres and hosted friends from far and wide. In 1905, however, one of these friends — quite possibly the unidentified man in the doorway — had a less than pleasant stay.
Variously described as Plympton’s “confidential servant” (New-York Tribune 9/22/1905), “his dresser or his guest…[or] a man of all work about the place” (Old Colony Memorial 9/23/1905), “fastest friend” (New York Times 9/23/1905), and”best friend in the world” in the Globe obituary, Captain George Martin was born in Maine around 1845. As the Times further reported,
Martin twenty years ago was known to every seafaring man entering New York and other ports. He was always in charge of the biggest freight vessels. While ashore he met Plympton, then an actor of prominence. The sailor had accumulated a little fortune. They lived together and cooked for each other…Martin followed [Plympton] wherever he traveled, helping him in his make-up and stage dressing. For six years, Plympton has only worked six weeks of the year, spending the rest of the time usually in camping with his friend.
Why all the press for a less-than-well-known sailor? While the news stories vary in detail, the gist is that “the warmest and most intimate of friends” (Globe obituary) fell out on the night of September 13, 1905. After a day of heavy drinking, Martin purposefully left Plympton at the train station some miles from the Grange. Plympton walked home and confronted Martin. A fist fight followed, with Plympton on the losing end, “left prone on the battlefield in front of the barn” (Old Colony Memorial). Witnesses reported hearing a hysterical Plympton threaten retaliation and the sound of heavy blows. Two days later Martin lay in Mass. General Hospital unconscious from a fractured skull. A week after that, Plympton was arrested for assault with intent to kill and locked up in the Plymouth County Jail.
Within days, Plympton made his $5,000 bail, removed to Boston where he visited Martin, and told the Globe
“I will say that Capt. Martin regrets the occurrence as keenly as I do. We are still friends and will continue to be friends if he recovers.” (9/25/1905)
Martin did slowly recover. Plympton’s case was delayed repeatedly and his bond reduced. On October 19, the Globe reported that Martin had met with Plympton’s lawyer, the superintendant of the hospital and the Deputy Sheriff and
manifested a strong desire to leave the hospital and go home with Mr. Plimpton as his friend…[he] disavowed any claim on his part that Eben Plimpton was capable of any attempt to kill him.
In the end, the two men reconciled and as Plympton’s Globe obituary recounts
Martin was released from the hospital, and by invitation accompanied his “best friend in the world back to “The Grange” and the incident was closed.
93 Lake Street, 1975. Photograph by Ted Avery.
Also known as the Jonathan Holmes House and located 93 Lake Street, the Grange was razed in 2011.
Instead of the photographs and documents usually on display in the Local History exhibit case, this month we’ve got a bunch of things, or more formally, artifacts, relics, realia.
What kind of things are these, you might ask? If Julie Andrews were here, she’d sing it like this…
A box full of shoe tacks, a piece of bog iron
A stereoviewer, a cat’s paw for prying
A hammer for caulking, a key on a string
These are a few of my favorite things
In early days, all public meetings both religion and secular were held in the old meeting house and all notices of meetings were posted on the front of the meeting house for parish and town were one. After the formation of separate religious bodies and the building of the Town House, certain notices continued to be posted nearby the meeting house, and for this purpose, a small bulletin board was set up on the post where the wall of the burying ground and the fence around the Green met. This was the Town Post, the post and bulletin board where town notices were posted. Notices were certainly posted there until 1911 and I am told there were notices posted there later but not regularly.
The Town Post still stands just between the Training Green and the First Parish Church.
As Emily Drew tells us in the card file she created to describe the lantern slides she used to illustrate lectures on Kingston history
East side South Street, near Wapping Rd. Built by Josiah Cook in [1854] when there was a fashion for six- and eight-sided or round houses and barns. The rooms inside are attractive with corners cut off. View from S. or S.W. An older, earlier house, built in ____ had stood for many years in or close by the driveway (south). When the present house was finished, the older one was demolished and the driveway built. In the background may be seen the house recently occupied by the Varneys and some time before that by [Howland?] Sampson. See #106.
And here is #106.
The Octagon House, 1920
Emily’s notes for this lantern slide:
(East side South St. near Wapping Rd.) Now owned by Clarence Ertman. House was built close by a much older one by Josiah Cook. Octagon and round houses were fashionable at that time (see #83) More comprehensive view than #83, shows more of farm buildings. This view is from the N. or N.W.
And finally, here’s a more recent view.
The Octagon House, 1998 (photo courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Commission)
Beginning in 1912, the U.S. Treasury decided to get rid of all of the Confederate currency that had been hanging around for 50 years or so. They didn’t just shred it: they sent sample sets to libraries, museums and other collecting institutions.
Confederate $20 bill, 1863
As Franklin MacVeagh, Secretary of the Treasury (and creator of the buffalo nickel) wrote to “Librarian” at the Frederic C. Adams Public Library on February 8, 1913,
“As your Library will no doubt be interested in receiving specimens of notes issued by the Confederate States of America, for exhibition purposes, I take pleasure in sending you an assortment of the same.
“These notes came into the possession of the Union Army about the close of the Civil War, and were turned over by the War Department to the Treasury of the United States in the year 1867.
“The Treasury Department has no complete series of the notes, and in presenting such specimens as are now in its custody the Department feels assured that proper disposition will be made for their safe-keeping so as to render them of permanent value to your Library as historical relics.”
Added to the historical collection by Kingston’s first public librarian Jennie McLauthlen and kept safe by her successors in the Local History Room, they are now on exhibit as items of permanent value for your viewing pleasure.
At a special Town Meeting held May 28, 1906, the following votes were passed:
Voted that the committee chosen by the Town to settle with the City of Brockton* be authorized to purchase for the town an electric motor or motors of such power and design as in their judgment shall be suitable, and install the same at the pumping station.
New pumping station machinery, 1906
Voted, That the Committee chosen to settle with the City of Brockton be authorized to contract with the Plymouth Electric Light Co. for the extension of the lines of that company to connect with the pumping station.
Voted, That the committee chosen to settle with the City of Brockton be authorized to purchase such additional pumps and other machinery, and other apparatus as may in their judgment be necessary for the proper operation of the pumping station.
New pumping station machinery, 1906
At a meeting held June 29, 1906, the following vote was passed:
Voted, In order to provide money to be expended for the improvement of the water works, including power therefor, as voted at the special town meeting held May 28, 1906, that the Treasurer be, and hereby is, authorized to borrow a sum not exceeding five thousand, five hundred dollars, and to issue therefor the notes of the town each for the sum of five hundred and fifty dollars, bearing interest at a rate not exceeding 4 1/2 per cent. per annum, payable semi-annually, dated August 1st, 1906, and payable on at the end of one year from said date, and one at the end of each year thereafter until all are paid. The said notes are to be signed by the Treasurer, and countersigned by a majority of the Selectmen.
* This committee had been appointed in 1905 and “authorized to settle all claims which the Town has or may have against the City of Brockton for the taking the water of Silver Lake.” Members included the Water Commissioners — George B. Holmes, Edward G. Brown and Truman H. Fuller — along with Charles H. Drew and James L. Hall.
Source: IC-7 LHR General Photographs; Annual Town Reports 1905 and 1906
Do you recall one night in June,
When sailing down Jones River,
We listened to the Bullfrog’s tune
And watched the moonbeams quiver?
I oft since then have watched the moon
But never, love, ah never, never,
Can I forget that night in June
While sailing down Jones River.
Can I forget that night in June
While sailing down Jones River.
Can I forget that night in June
While sailing down Jones River.
Can I forget that night in June
And the moonlight on Jones River
Our boat went drifting toward the Bay,
By the wharves along the river,
Those old, old wharves where the good ships lay,
In the days now gone forever.
The busy hum of toil is o’er;
On the ways no ships were standing, standing
Holmes, Cushman, Bartlett, Drew, were gone;
All silent lay The Landing.
Can I forget that night in June
When sailing down Jones River?
Can I forget that Bullfrog’s tune
And the moonlight on Jones River?
Catherine Drew Russell
It was customary in earlier days for boating parties in the river or out into the Bay, to drift and sing. Moonlight parties were especially popular. Popular tunes of the day were often sung with original words, like the above, following the general idea of the song but adapted to the mood of the party. Miss Russell was very apt at impromptu rhyming and this is one of the songs composed at the time and recalled in later years. We used the song with its original music at the meeting of the Jones River Village Club, when Miss Russell gave her Musical Reminiscences of Kingston, with different members assisting in the vocal and instrumental examples. E.F.D. [Emily Fuller Drew]
