I cannot pass by Court Square without a notice of Mrs. Nicolson’s boarding house, which stood many years on the north side of the Square. Thomas Nicholson, son of James, came into possession of the house after the death of his father in 1772. He married for a second wife about 1790, Hannah, daughter of John Otis, and sister of Mrs. Grace Heyman Goddard, already noticed as the mother of Mrs. Abraham Jackson. Thomas Nicolson was a shipmaster, and I believe was for some time before his death in the United States Revenue Service, and died on the island of Gaudaloupe, February 9, 1798. He was also during the revolution commander of the privateer sloop America, carrying six swivels and seventy men, owned by William Watson, Ephraim Spooner and others. Capt. Nicolson had by his first wife Sarah Mayhew, nine children: Sarah, 1771; Hannah, 1773; Polly, 1775; Elizabeth, 1777; Lucy Mayhew, 1778; Nancy, 1780; Thomas, 1782; James, 1784, and Anna. Of these Hannah married John Morong; Polly married John Allen of Salem, and Anna married John D. Wilson of Salem. Lucy Mayhew died in Boston, January 21, 1858. By his second wife, Hannah Otis, he had Samuel, 1791, who married Sarah Brinley, and died in Boston, January 6, 1866; Hannah Otis, 1793, who married William Spooner; Daniel, 1796, who died March 6, 1815; Caroline, 1798, who married Edward Miller of Quincy. The estate when Capt. Nicolson died extended from the present yard of Mr. Hedge to the line of Mr. Bittinger, and consisted of the main house and a range of outbuildings which included a woodshed, chaise house, ice house and barn, with a large garden in the rear. After Capt. Nicolson’s death, but precisely when I do not know, Mrs. Nicolson fitted up her house as an inn, and called it the Old Colony House. The Pilgrim House was the stage house, and Mrs. Nicolson’s house was the lawyer’s house. The judges, however, sought private lodgings, and I remember that Chief Justice Shaw always occupied a front parlor in the house opposite Court square, which was the residence of Ichabod Shaw, where the Methodist church now stands. Among the regular boarders in the Old Colony House whom I remember were Samuel Davis, Ebenezer G. Parker, cashier of the Old Colony Bank, Gustavus Gilbert, attorney, Eliab Ward, student at law, Isaac N. Stoddard and Hiram Fuller, teachers. During the sessions of the court it was the gathering place of the lawyers who, without railroad conveniences, made a week of it under Mrs. Nicolson’s roof. There might be found Charles J. Holmes of Rochester, Seth Miller of Wareham, Zachariah Eddy of Middleboro, Williams Latham of Bridgewater, William Baylies and Austin Packard of West Bridgewater, Welcome Young of East Bridgewater, Kilborn Whitman of Pembroke, and Ebenezer Gay of Hingham. To these were sometimes added James T. Austin, Attorney General, Franklin Dexter and Rufus Choate. Timothy Coffin of New Bedford generally attended the Plymouth court, and