UP TO DATE. 



535 



highways has been followed. Neighborhood jealousies and 

 jobberies have been diminished and the whole responsi- 

 bility for good roads rests upon one man, towards whom 

 the town never has been niggardly in its appropriations 

 for highways. 



The recent State enterprise in appointing a State High- 

 way Commission has touched the Cohasset streets in only 

 one place. A stretch of a half mile of macadam leading 

 through the Great Swamp on the way to Hingham has 

 been built during the past year under the direction of the 

 commission, by our superintendent of streets. Thus 

 the impassable swamp* which had compelled Cohasset 

 carts in early days to make the detour of Cedar Street 

 among rocky ledges became at last the most perfect high- 

 way in the town. 



Among the many items which could be noted to reveal 

 our character as a summer resort is the post office. Our 

 mails are more than doubled by the people who have made 

 this their summer home. The postal service at the begin- 

 ning of our national life has been indicated already in the 

 chapter upon " Stagecoach, Packet, and Railway," but the 

 small days were continued with only slight growth until 

 about fifteen years ago.f The abode of the office in Joel 

 Willcutt's time, 1806, was a cobbler shop J on Elm Street 

 near the Cove. 



In Zenas Stoddard's term of twenty-four years its home 

 was in a general country store on Main Street, now the 

 dwelling of Charles H. Willard. The little case of post- 



* See a subscription paper in the town's historical collection, written by Elisha 

 Doane about the year 1815, upon which thirty-four names were signed pledging 

 different amounts of labor to open the new road through the swamp. 



tPostmasters appointed by the government from the first one to the last are as 

 follows : — 



Samuel Brown, April i, 1803. Joseph St. John, October 21, 1885. 



Joel Willcutt, February 26, 1806. Charles A. Gross, September 13, 1889. 



Zenas Stoddard, March 15, 1837. Joseph St. John, September 25, 1893. 



Edward Tower, April 4, 1861. Harry W. Souther, August 2, 1897. 



Charles A. Gross, March 27, 1873. 



J See picture of this post office on p. 329. 



