228 History of Hingham. 



a neighbor, was the famous Captain of the Trainband, Joshua 

 Hobart, the most prominent of the townspeople, excepting- his 

 brother, the minister. As already said, his lot included the land 

 upon which the meeting-house of 1681 stands. 



Here too, then, or a little later, we should have found probably 

 the only gathering-place outside the Meeting-house, for the ma- 

 trons of these early times in our history; for here Dame Ellen, the 

 worthy wife of the Captain, kept a little shop, in which were sold 

 the gloves and ribbons, the laces and pins and needles and thread, 

 and possibly even, now and then a piece of dress goods of foreign 

 make, and all the little knick-knacks as dear and as necessary to 

 our great-great-grandmothers as to the wives and sisters of the 

 present day. Upon the homestead of his father on the easterly 

 side of the street, lived Samuel Thaxter, a cordwainer, and 

 ancestor of Joseph B. Thaxter, who occupies the same spot ; 

 while a little south, and about opposite the head of Water Street, 

 Andrew Lane, a wheelwright, settled upon a lot of some four 

 acres, with John Mayo near by. A little beyond, and very near 

 to where Winter Street intersects Main, John Prince, a soldier of 

 the war, made his home. At this point also we should have seen 

 the tannery of the Cushings, stretching for a considerable distance 

 along the street, as tanneries almost always do, with the sides of 

 leather drying in tlie sun, the bits scattered here and there, the 

 piles of red bark, and the inevitable tan entrance and driveway ; all 

 making the air redolent with an odor bv no means disagreeable. 



Upon the lot now occupied by Dr. Robbins at the foot of Pear-tree 

 Hill, a few rods north of his residence, Matthew dishing, who died 

 in 1G60 at seventy-one years of age, the progenitor, probably, of 

 all the families of that name in the United States, had established 

 the home which remained uninterruptedly in the family until 1887 : 

 and here still lived his wife, who died subsequently to the war, aged 

 ninety-six, his son Daniel, then and until his death town clerk, and 

 one of the wealthy men of the period, and Matthew a grandson, 

 afterwards lieutenant and captain. Not far away Matthew Gushing 

 senior's daughter Deborah lived with her husband, Matthias Briggs, 

 while on the opposite side of the street, at what is now the Kecshan 

 place, Daniel the younger, a weaver by trade, established a home 

 and reared a numerous family. The Cushings were shopkeepers 

 in addition to their other occupations, and probably the little end 

 shop built onto the dwelling on cither side of the street contained 

 articles of sale and barter, — produce and pelts and West India 

 goods and ammunition. We may suppose that these small centres 

 of trade, together with the tannery in the immediate vicinity, gave 

 quite a little air of business to the neighborhood, — forming 

 indeed the primitive exchange of the period. 



Not far from where Mr. Fearing Burr's store now is, Lieut. John 

 Smith, Captain Hobart' s able second in rank, had a home and a 

 fort combined, being one of the " garrison houses " whose wise 



