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the two public pumps,
Jordan's and
Giles', stared pleasantly at each other across the square, and with outstretched hands vied with one another in extending their aqueous hospitality to thirsty travelers, without money and without price.
On the easterly side of Bow street, near the square, was the mansion of
Deacon Robert Vinal, a pleasant home, with grape arbors, peach, apple, and pear orchards, flower gardens and conservatories.
I shall never forget one tree of whose fruit I was especially fond, a blue pearmain apple.
Mr. Vinal had a fine barn and stable in the rear of his house; these were afterwards destroyed by incendiary fire.
Deacon Vinal's children were Robert A., Quincy A., John W., Edward E., Alfred E., Margaret, afterwards wife of
General William L. Burt, postmaster of
Boston, Emily, afterwards
Mrs. Wilder,
Elizabeth, Lydia, Martha, and Lucy.
Deacon Vinal was one of the largest property holders in the town; I recollect him as a pleasant gentleman of the old school: his and
Mrs. Vinal's pleasant greeting to me on my return from the army will always be an agreeable memory.
Next north of Deacon Vinal's, on Bow street, came the estate of Robert Sanborn, the father of Jane, wife of Richard Sturtevant, Esq. She lived on part of the old estate until her death a few years since.
Mr. Sanborn's sons, George A. and Albert L., have already been mentioned.
Mr. Sanborn was a kindly man, known to every one as ‘Uncle Robert’; his farm, like all the others on the north sides of Washington and Bow streets, extended far tip the hill, and lay between Deacon Vinal's and Walnut street, then a lane.
His house was, I think, moved to and still stands on Clark street.
Between Walnut street and School street, on Bow, the only other house I remember was that of Henry Adams, ‘Squire Adams,’ as we all called him. His house was an old Revolutionary one, at which the British are said to have stopped for water on their way to Concord; it was torn down to make way for the Methodist church.
Starting again on the northwest side of Bow street, near Sand Pit square, was the Hawkins block of four tenements, the
