It is not improbable that Plymouth was associated with the first claim made on a citizen of Massachusetts for the restoration of a slave to his master. Information concerning it I found among my grandfather’s papers. In 1808 the brig Thomas, Solomon Davie master, at some port in Delaware, received on board a slave who had deserted from his master, David M. McIlvaine, and until 1812 remained in my grandfather’s service, receiving wages as a hired man. In 1812 Mr. McIlvaine found the slave on board the brig in Baltimore, and a claim for his restoration being made, he was given up. In the meantime the slave who called himself George Thomson, bought a small house on the brow of Cole’s Hill, and in a settlement of a suit to recover wages, which my grandfather had paid to Thomson, Mr. McIlvaine, in consideration of the money paid, conveyed to my grandfather the house, and the following articles of personal property, which were in the keeping of a colored woman, named Violet Phillips, and were the property of Thompson—a blue cloth coat, fine; a black cloth coat, fine; one pair of ribbed velvet pantaloons; one black bombazet trousers; one white shirt; one white waistcoat; one black bombazet waistcoat; one black silk waistcoat; three yellow marseilles waistcoats; one pair white cotton stockings; two checked shirts; one new fur hat; one chest, and one trunk in which were the title papers to his house, and one silver watch. Of many stories about these old slaves I have room for only one. When the use of biers, instead of hearses was universal, occasionally two of these freedmen would be hired as bearers. On one occasion, when Quamony and Plato were employed, they had heard that gloves were given to the bearers, and just as the procession was about to start, Quamony said to Plato, “Hab you hab’m glub?” “No,” said Plato, “I no hab’m no glub.” “Nor I hab’m glub nudder,” said Quamony, “We no bare widout glub, let the man in the box carry hisself.” CHAPTER XV. The house adjoining the Baptist church, now occupied by the Custom House, recalls next to the house on Cole’s Hill, in which I was born, the pleasantest associations, and the dearest memories. In that building my grandfather William Davis, born July 15, 1758, lived from 1781, the year of his marriage, until January 5, 1826, the date of his death. He was the son of Thos. Davis, and one of a family of one daughter and six sons, Sarah, Thomas, William, John, Samuel, Isaac P. and Wendell. Sarah, born June 29, 1754, married LeBaron Bradford of Bristol, son of William Bradford, United States senator from the state of Rhode Island.