The next building was occupied for some years previous to 1852 by Thomas Davis and Wm. S. Russell, under the firm name of Davis & Russell, who kept a general store for the sale of dry goods and crockery. The importation of the Pilgrim plates was due to their enterprise. The tradition that they were manufactured expressly for use at the dinner in 1820 on the anniversary of the “Landing” is not correct. Messrs. Davis & Russell, impressed with the idea that an invoice of Pilgrim china would prove a profitable venture, ordered of Enoch Wood & Sons of Burslem, England, a considerable quantity of large sized plates and two sizes of pitchers. Happening to arrive not long before the celebration, they were hired for the dinner, and afterwards sold as mementoes of the occasion. They took so well with the public, and brought such high prices, that the firm ordered an additional invoice, which included in all six sizes of plates and the same two sizes of pitchers, and the pieces have been scattered far and wide, the market value in bric-a-brac stores being twelve dollars for the large plates, and fifteen and ten dollars for the two sizes of pitchers, while the small sized plates are unobtainable. There is a group of these various sizes owned by a collector in New York, a photograph of which may be seen in Pilgrim Hall. At this time it is impossible to distinguish the pieces originally imported from those which came afterward. Davis & Russell were succeeded by John S. Hayward in 1827, who continued in the dry goods business until 1831. The store was afterwards occupied by the Plymouth Institution for savings, the Old Colony Insurance Co., and a reading room, until 1842, and was bought in 1847 by Jason Hart, who moved his dry goods business from Summer street, and occupied the store until 1856, when Leander Lovell and John H. Harlow, under the firm name of Lovell & Harlow, became its occupants. John H. Harlow and Albert Barnes succeeded Lovell & Harlow, they in turn being succeeded by Wm. Atwood, clothier, the predecessor of H. H. Cole, the present occupant. Jason Hart died February 20, 1874, at the age of seventy-one. The room over the store was occupied at various times by Joseph W. Hodgkins, tailor, Wm. Whiting and Wm. G. Russell, teachers of private schools, Wm. Davis, attorney-at-law, and Stephen Lucas and others, photographers. William Davis died, February 19, 1853, and Mr. Hodgkins died, May 11, 1872. William G. Russell was the son of Thomas and Mary Ann (Goodwin) Russell, and graduated at Harvard in 1840. He studied law with Wm. Whiting, his brother-in-law, and became an eminent member of the Boston bar. He married in 1847, May Ellen, daughter of Thomas and Lydia (Coffin) Hedge, and died in Boston, February 6, 1896.