In speaking of Main street in an early chapter I referred to the physical changes which it had undergone within my memory. I propose now to say something about the occupants of its houses. As far back as I can remember the building on the corner of Main and Leyden streets contained a store in the lower story on Main street, a large room or hall on the corner over the store, and a tenement with an entrance on Leyden street. The store was occupied as early as 1825 as a hardware store by James and Ephraim Spooner, who dissolved partnership in 1832, Ephraim continuing in the business. In 1839 John Washburn and William Rider Drew were established in the store in the same business. In 1846 Messrs. Washburn and Drew separated, the former taking a store on the west side of the street, and the latter establishing himself as has been stated in the building on Leyden street, which had been occupied by Steward and Alderman, and Alderman and Gooding. The store after Washburn & Drew left it was divided into two and the corner one was occupied at various times by Benjamin Swift in the watch and clock business, and Edward W. Atwood. The other was occupied by Edward Hathaway and Edward Bartlett, Reuben Peterson and Rich and Weston’s express. At a later time both stores were occupied by Weston’s express succeeded by their present occupant, the New York and Boston Despatch Express. It is worthy of notice as showing one of the steps in the progress of the temperance movement that the Plymouth Temperance Society in 1825 placed in the hands of Ephraim Spooner a quantity of intoxicating liquors to be by him given without charge to persons presenting the written prescription of a physician. Mr. Spooner was appointed postmaster in 1840, and again in 1842, after an interval of one year, during which Joseph Lucas held the office. He died April 10, 1887. The large room over the store was occupied as a school room in 1831 and 1832 by George Partridge Bradford, who taught a mixed school of boys and girls, of whom I was one, and by Wm. Whiting, also, as a school room in 1833. It was later used by private teachers, and often as political campaign headquarters. The tenement was in those days occupied by Oliver Wood, the father of the late Oliver T. and Isaac L. Wood. Mr. Bradford was the son of Gamaliel Bradford of Boston, and graduated at Harvard in 1825. He prepared for the ministry, but never sought a settlement, devoting himself to the profession of a teacher. Concord was frequently his home, and he possessed that mental temperament which made him a congenial companion of Emerson and Alcott. He died in Cambridge in 1890 at the age of 80.