CREEK ROAD GANG
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Autobiography of
Nathaniel Watson Ladd
(1848-1932)
Part 5
Editor's note: This is the fifth excerpt from the autobiographical manuscript left by Nathaniel Watson Ladd. See the October 2009 issue for the first installment , the November 2009 issue for the second installment, December 2009 issue for the third installment and the January 2010 issue for the fourth installment of his autobiography.
Born in 1848 in Derry, New Hampshire, the second child and first son of Daniel and Lucy Ladd, Nathaniel Watson Ladd went on to graduate from Dartmouth College and to study law at Boston University. He became a Boston lawyer and political figure, serving on the Boston Common Council, and later in the State Legislature. He was also a founder of the Boston Athletic Association. He died in 1932.
After Nathaniel's father died, his grandfather Ladd had found work for the boy with a farmer. After some time there, the farmer had no further work for Nathaniel, who was obliged to leave. In this passage, he talks about his experiences upon leaving that farm.
When I left there, savings that I had made gave me $3.75, and that was really my salvation, because I had no one really to help me and had to depend on myself. Of course I visited my mother, who was then keeping house for my grandfather Dustin after his wife died. Although he had money in the bank and a good farm free of encumbrances, he had learned the shoemakers trade after he was superannuated as a minister, and was a hard-working man at that trade. My Mother told me that of course he could not keep me in idleness.
I went to the Hedding Camp meeting in Epping and quite a determined effort was made at that time to convert me. But I could not have the experience that others said they had, and while my brothers and sister, when they got older, were all members of the Methodist church, I was the black sheep of the family.
From the camp meeting, I went to Portsmouth. My work on the farm had really been too hard. I had the nose bleed a great deal, and felt that inside work would be better for me. I went into every store in Portsmouth to try and get a place, but failed. I heard there was a packet running up the river to Dover, and the fare was twenty-five cents. I took that from my little pile, which was getting low, and the first store I went into was the clothing store of William H. Earle. I asked him if he had his Fall help employed. He said, yes, he had, but he commenced to talk with me in a kindly way and finally said that he had a nephew in Kittery, Maine running a similar store who needed a boy he could trust to take care of the store while he went away to be married, but he said he wanted an honest boy. Well, I said I thought I was honest. I meant to be. He asked me if I had any recommendation. I told him, no, I had not, but thought I could get them if it were necessary. I told him my grandfathers were both Methodist ministers, and well known in New Hampshire and Vermont, and no doubt would give me recommendations. He finally gave me a letter to his nephew.
I had some distant relative living in Durham, and walking there, stayed the night with them. There happened to be there, visiting, some New York men who tried to discourage me by saying if I went into a store to sell goods, I should have to lie about them. I said I did not believe it. The next morning my relatives set me in their boat across the River to Newington. I walked from there to Portsmouth and crossed the Toll Bridge to Kittery. I happened to get to the store just before noon, and it was closed. I waited, and Mr. Earle soon came, and often afterwards laughed about the way in which I accosted him. He said that I said, "Is this Mr. Early?" and handed him the letter. He took it and glanced at it, and asked me to take a seat in the store, for the men were just coming off from the Navy Yard, and he would be very busy for an hour. Then he asked me about myself, and finally employed me at a hundred and twenty-five dollars for six months, which just paid my board and gave me enough, or nearly enough, for a new suit of clothes. He sold about $30,000.00 worth of goods in a year there, and made a profit of about $3,000.00
I had to go through all the stock, which consisted of clothing, boots and shoes, hats and caps, furnishing goods and trunks and valises. I went through all the stock so I knew where to find everything in two weeks, and then he went away on his wedding trip and left me in sole charge of the store. I was then sixteen, well along in my seventeenth year. Mr. Earle told me afterwards that one day he gave me a ten dollar bill to take to the Toll Bridge keeper, whom he knew, to get the change, and he said that he did it to test my honesty. Of course I did not think of taking anything out of this money, for it did not belong to me.
He was away for two weeks. Everything went well except one evening a man by the name of Kaler put on a pea jacket priced eight dollars. He had a beautiful form, and the jacket was a perfect fit. It had been our custom, as I had learned, to let people take out several pairs of shoes or other things to see whether they suited the folks at home, and return those they did not need, and pay for what they took. He said he would take that home to see if his wife liked it and come in and pay me. He lived next door. I let him take it, and after he had gone, an old man who worked in the Navy Yard, and who had been quite accustomed to come in and sit on a settee of an evening, told me he guessed I had made a mistake, for the man was well known as a deadbeat. He never paid, and I always thought that old man, who had enjoyed the privilege of sitting there for years and keeping warm on a Winter evening, should have found a way of letting me know that I should not have let this man have the jacket. But at the end of six months, Mr. Earle said I had done so well that he would not charge me for it. Kaler's daughter would marry my cousin Charles Dustin, who was later to succeed my brother Frank in the store.
I was accustomed to sleep in a room over the store. The next door neighbor had told me that one night he saw a man going around the building as if he were listening. He stopped right in front of the neighbor's window. The neighbor threw a baseball bat right through the window at him and he fled. One evening I was in the store alone when a couple of sailors from one of the War Ships came in with a pistol and offered it to me for ten dollars. I asked one of the men sitting there, whom we had been accustomed to trust, to look after the store while I went to find Mr. Earle at his home and see what we should do about buying the pistol. When I got there and explained it to Mr. Earle, he said he thought that as I had entertained the proposition, it might be a scheme to find out whether or not I was armed, and the pistol had better be bought. So I bought it. Nothing ever happened, but Mr. Earle and I often used it on holidays, shooting at marks.
At the end of six months, Mr. Earle hired me for another six months. At the end of that six months, he made an advance of another fifty dollars. Then he sold out the business to a man who had been a clerk in a grocery store kept by two men, one of whom had a half interest with Mr. Earle in the clothing store. His work had been largely delivering the groceries, and he knew nothing about the clothing business. I taught it to him. I used to make out a memorandum of everything that was needed by lots and numbers and quantities and sizes. He would take the memorandum to Boston and buy the goods. He agreed to give me a salary of five hundred dollars for the year and a partial interest in the business.
When I first went to work in the store, in September 1864, there were three thousand men at work on the Navy Yard, and there were ten rum shops in the little village, called the Fore Side. Gangs of rowdies would be racing from one rum shop to the others all through the night. I, being accustomed to the quiet of the Country, could not sleep. A Good Templar's Lodge was started in the Village, and I joined it. After a while, they made me secretary, and inside of a month, we had all those rum shops shut up. I remember they made me a Committee of one to find a place for an outing for our Lodge, and I went to Hampton Beach and made an arrangement for an excursion there. Quite a number of us went and had a good time bathing, etc.
In my work as secretary, I discovered that I was not well enough educated; for instance, I put up a notice in which I spelled the word "notice" with an "s" instead of a "ce." Dr. Wentworth, who lived in the village and had a pretty daughter with whom I was well acquainted, made fun of me, and I decided that I had better get an education.
Born in 1848 in Derry, New Hampshire, the second child and first son of Daniel and Lucy Ladd, Nathaniel Watson Ladd went on to graduate from Dartmouth College and to study law at Boston University. He became a Boston lawyer and political figure, serving on the Boston Common Council, and later in the State Legislature. He was also a founder of the Boston Athletic Association. He died in 1932.
After Nathaniel's father died, his grandfather Ladd had found work for the boy with a farmer. After some time there, the farmer had no further work for Nathaniel, who was obliged to leave. In this passage, he talks about his experiences upon leaving that farm.
When I left there, savings that I had made gave me $3.75, and that was really my salvation, because I had no one really to help me and had to depend on myself. Of course I visited my mother, who was then keeping house for my grandfather Dustin after his wife died. Although he had money in the bank and a good farm free of encumbrances, he had learned the shoemakers trade after he was superannuated as a minister, and was a hard-working man at that trade. My Mother told me that of course he could not keep me in idleness.
I went to the Hedding Camp meeting in Epping and quite a determined effort was made at that time to convert me. But I could not have the experience that others said they had, and while my brothers and sister, when they got older, were all members of the Methodist church, I was the black sheep of the family.
From the camp meeting, I went to Portsmouth. My work on the farm had really been too hard. I had the nose bleed a great deal, and felt that inside work would be better for me. I went into every store in Portsmouth to try and get a place, but failed. I heard there was a packet running up the river to Dover, and the fare was twenty-five cents. I took that from my little pile, which was getting low, and the first store I went into was the clothing store of William H. Earle. I asked him if he had his Fall help employed. He said, yes, he had, but he commenced to talk with me in a kindly way and finally said that he had a nephew in Kittery, Maine running a similar store who needed a boy he could trust to take care of the store while he went away to be married, but he said he wanted an honest boy. Well, I said I thought I was honest. I meant to be. He asked me if I had any recommendation. I told him, no, I had not, but thought I could get them if it were necessary. I told him my grandfathers were both Methodist ministers, and well known in New Hampshire and Vermont, and no doubt would give me recommendations. He finally gave me a letter to his nephew.
I had some distant relative living in Durham, and walking there, stayed the night with them. There happened to be there, visiting, some New York men who tried to discourage me by saying if I went into a store to sell goods, I should have to lie about them. I said I did not believe it. The next morning my relatives set me in their boat across the River to Newington. I walked from there to Portsmouth and crossed the Toll Bridge to Kittery. I happened to get to the store just before noon, and it was closed. I waited, and Mr. Earle soon came, and often afterwards laughed about the way in which I accosted him. He said that I said, "Is this Mr. Early?" and handed him the letter. He took it and glanced at it, and asked me to take a seat in the store, for the men were just coming off from the Navy Yard, and he would be very busy for an hour. Then he asked me about myself, and finally employed me at a hundred and twenty-five dollars for six months, which just paid my board and gave me enough, or nearly enough, for a new suit of clothes. He sold about $30,000.00 worth of goods in a year there, and made a profit of about $3,000.00
I had to go through all the stock, which consisted of clothing, boots and shoes, hats and caps, furnishing goods and trunks and valises. I went through all the stock so I knew where to find everything in two weeks, and then he went away on his wedding trip and left me in sole charge of the store. I was then sixteen, well along in my seventeenth year. Mr. Earle told me afterwards that one day he gave me a ten dollar bill to take to the Toll Bridge keeper, whom he knew, to get the change, and he said that he did it to test my honesty. Of course I did not think of taking anything out of this money, for it did not belong to me.
He was away for two weeks. Everything went well except one evening a man by the name of Kaler put on a pea jacket priced eight dollars. He had a beautiful form, and the jacket was a perfect fit. It had been our custom, as I had learned, to let people take out several pairs of shoes or other things to see whether they suited the folks at home, and return those they did not need, and pay for what they took. He said he would take that home to see if his wife liked it and come in and pay me. He lived next door. I let him take it, and after he had gone, an old man who worked in the Navy Yard, and who had been quite accustomed to come in and sit on a settee of an evening, told me he guessed I had made a mistake, for the man was well known as a deadbeat. He never paid, and I always thought that old man, who had enjoyed the privilege of sitting there for years and keeping warm on a Winter evening, should have found a way of letting me know that I should not have let this man have the jacket. But at the end of six months, Mr. Earle said I had done so well that he would not charge me for it. Kaler's daughter would marry my cousin Charles Dustin, who was later to succeed my brother Frank in the store.
I was accustomed to sleep in a room over the store. The next door neighbor had told me that one night he saw a man going around the building as if he were listening. He stopped right in front of the neighbor's window. The neighbor threw a baseball bat right through the window at him and he fled. One evening I was in the store alone when a couple of sailors from one of the War Ships came in with a pistol and offered it to me for ten dollars. I asked one of the men sitting there, whom we had been accustomed to trust, to look after the store while I went to find Mr. Earle at his home and see what we should do about buying the pistol. When I got there and explained it to Mr. Earle, he said he thought that as I had entertained the proposition, it might be a scheme to find out whether or not I was armed, and the pistol had better be bought. So I bought it. Nothing ever happened, but Mr. Earle and I often used it on holidays, shooting at marks.
At the end of six months, Mr. Earle hired me for another six months. At the end of that six months, he made an advance of another fifty dollars. Then he sold out the business to a man who had been a clerk in a grocery store kept by two men, one of whom had a half interest with Mr. Earle in the clothing store. His work had been largely delivering the groceries, and he knew nothing about the clothing business. I taught it to him. I used to make out a memorandum of everything that was needed by lots and numbers and quantities and sizes. He would take the memorandum to Boston and buy the goods. He agreed to give me a salary of five hundred dollars for the year and a partial interest in the business.
When I first went to work in the store, in September 1864, there were three thousand men at work on the Navy Yard, and there were ten rum shops in the little village, called the Fore Side. Gangs of rowdies would be racing from one rum shop to the others all through the night. I, being accustomed to the quiet of the Country, could not sleep. A Good Templar's Lodge was started in the Village, and I joined it. After a while, they made me secretary, and inside of a month, we had all those rum shops shut up. I remember they made me a Committee of one to find a place for an outing for our Lodge, and I went to Hampton Beach and made an arrangement for an excursion there. Quite a number of us went and had a good time bathing, etc.
In my work as secretary, I discovered that I was not well enough educated; for instance, I put up a notice in which I spelled the word "notice" with an "s" instead of a "ce." Dr. Wentworth, who lived in the village and had a pretty daughter with whom I was well acquainted, made fun of me, and I decided that I had better get an education.
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