The occupation of the site on which the store of George Gooding stands with a tenement over it, possesses unusual interest. About the year 1750 James Shurtleff built a house on the site which in 1789 came into the possession of Caleb Leach, who came to Plymouth from Bridgewater and projected the Plymouth water works, the first water works built in the United States. The company was chartered in 1796, the year after a company was chartered in Wilkesbarre, Penn., but the Plymouth works were constructed before the works of that town. The pipes were yellow or swamp pine logs, ten to twelve feet long, and ten inches in diameter, clear of sap, with a bore from two to four inches in diameter, and sharpened at one end, the other end bound with an iron hoop to prevent splitting when driven into the bore. During the latter years of the company iron connections with a flange in the middle were used. In 1800 the house came into the possession of Asa Hall, who came from Boston, and fitted up its lower room for a watchmaker’s shop. From that time to this, a period of one hundred and six years the site has been identified with the watch making business. In 1802 John Gooding, who came to Plymouth from Taunton, succeeded Mr. Hall in the shop, and in 1805 married Deborah, daughter of Benjamin Barnes. In the next year Mr. Barnes bought the house, and his son-in-law, Mr. Gooding, continued to occupy it, finally receiving in 1836 a deed of the property from Mr. Barnes. Not many years after Mr. Gooding obtained possession, he took down the old house and built the present one. I remember the old house well. The shop door was divided across the middle, the lower part wood, the upper part glass, and in suitable weather, the upper part was swung back. The other doors which I remember like this, were in the harness shop of Barnabas Otis on the south side of Summer street, the second or third above Spring street, the office of Dr. Amariah Preston, next north of the Gooding house, in the old house where Davis building now stands, and in the Solomon Churchill shop on the east side of Main street. Mr. Gooding was the son of Joseph and Rebecca (Macomber) Gooding of Taunton, and was born in 1780. His father was a watchmaker, and he had at least one, and I think two brothers, who followed the same trade. His brother Josiah and nephew Josiah, kept within my recollection a watchmaker’s and jeweller’s store in Joy’s building on Washington street, in Boston, many years. A member of one of the branches of Jos. Gooding’s family, Mr. A. W. B. Gooding, married Mary Woodward Barnes, a daughter of Bradford Barnes. Mr. Gooding was a member of the Board of Selectmen from 1825 to 1831, inclusive, a Director of the Plymouth Bank from 1839 to 1865, inclusive, and died September 25, 1870, at the age of ninety years. He had seven children, Deborah Barnes, who married Aurin Bugbee, John, 1808, who married Betsey H., daughter of Ephraim