Let me further premise, in closing this introductory chapter, by saying that, of events occurring during a period of seventy-five years, of the changes in the external character of Plymouth, and of the manners and customs and ways of living of its people, I have a distinct recollection. Some of these, at a still earlier period, I can imperfectly recall. For instance in 1825, when I was a few months more than three years of age, my mother carried me on a visit to her father in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, and while I recall nothing of the voyage made in a fishing schooner on her way to the Grand Banks, the accuracy of my memory concerning many localities in Shelburne, was confirmed on a visit to that place twenty-six years later in 1851. My grandfather, Gideon White, a native of Plymouth, and a descendant from Peregrine White, was a loyalist during the revolution, and, holding a Captain’s commission in the British army, served with his regiment in Jamaica during the war. With other loyalists he settled in Shelburne, where, receiving the appointment of Provincial Judge, he afterwards lived, making occasional visits to England, but none to the United States, until his death in 1833. He married Deborah Whitworth, the daughter of Miles Whitworth, a British Army surgeon, and four of his children married in Boston and Plymouth and Cambridge, while a son graduated at Harvard in 1812. I remember, too, that at the age of four, in 1826, I was carried to my first school. It was kept by Mrs. Martha Weston, who was known as Mrs. Patty, or more generally Ma’am Weston, the widow of Coomer Weston, and grandmother of our townsman, Myles S. Weston, in the house on North street, the third below that of Miss Dr. Pierce, not long since occupied by Wm. W. Brewster. I remember well the school room, its sanded floor and the cricket on which I sat. From that dear old lady, with a pleasant smile and kindly voice, I first tasted the “sweet food of kindly uttered knowledge.” She died July 27, 1841, and but few of her scholars can now be left to join with me in blessing her memory. CHAPTER II. Before proceeding to a general consideration of the streets and ways of Plymouth, and their changes, this is a fitting place to refer to an important alteration, in one of its chief highways, which, though occurring during my life time, is a little beyond the scope of my memory. In ancient times the route from Plymouth to Sandwich was through the district of “half way ponds,” which thus received its name. When a stage line between the two towns was established the route ran through Chiltonville, leaving Bramhall’s corner on the right, and passing over Eel River bridge, turned to the right and by a diagonal course reached a point on the present road near the estate of Mr. Jordan. At that time the road through Clark’s valley by the cotton factory extended no farther south than the cross roads leading to the Russell Mills on the west, and by the old Edes & Wood factory on the east.