Photo by Sally Pedley, The Northfield News The accounting desk of John P. Davis was in his store at Northfield Center, built for that purpose sometime about 1850. The desk is presently a part of the Northfield Historical Society Collection. John P. Davis was the father of Charles M. Davis, the Northfield attorney who had offices in the Mayo Building and owned the mill at Northfield Falls for many years. The Crier, Vol. 1, no. 10, Summer 1978, Julia McIntire, Editor

Another installment from William D. Hassett's Remembrances, dictated to Julia.

John P. Davis was the grandfather of Louise Davis Halsted. The society is in possession of Mr. Davis's desk which Louise says was his standup desk, mentioned below. She has no idea how it got from the store, which burned in 1901, to the Historical Society. (The site of the store is now a parking lot for Norwich University, adjacent to the original Hassett house.) Louise made a correction from last week's column. It was stated that John P. Davis (b 1819) was no kin to Charles M. Davis (b 1861). John P. Davis was Charles M. Davis's father. John Wooster Davis was Louise's father. Louise's great grandparents lived in the house now owned by Sidney Stetson and Janet Townsend.

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"Continuing south, the next landmark in the Center Village of 1890 was the general store *established by John P. Davis, a really remarkable institution in the life if the community. (Gregory states that J.P Davis established his business in 1850). John P. Davis was a pillar in the business life of Northfield. I remember him only as a handsome elderly man with snow white hair and a neatly cropped white beard, always immaculately dressed, the very embodiment of genteel dignity and kindness. He always had one full-time clerk. Some of the best businessmen in Washington County owed their early training to him. When not waiting on trade, Mr. Davis would be seen at his standup desk raised one step from the corner of the store and marked off by an angle of banisters. Hard by was an informal post office station with a couple dozen boxes assigned to such residents of the village who did not object to having their mal scrutinized by the curios and their newspapers read and replaced.

"Mr. Davis carried a very large inventory of merchandise: dry goods, groceries and crockery. On the top shelf was a long row of stone china bedchamber pots, called 'utensils" in those prim Victorian days, supplemented by objects of baser utility, popularly called "mud-turtles' (bedpans). At our house the rule was that anybody who broke a 'bedroom device" must go to The Davis store for a replacement. This Mr. Davis would hand over, unwrapped, with a stick of candy in it.

"Adjoining the store was a ware room where the bulk groceries were stored, such as flour in barrels, sugar, kerosene in a messy steel tank, and molasses, which was drawn from a hogshead through a gadget that turned with a crank. Beyond was an ample-sized horse shed plastered with circus advertisements with a hitching rail outside. The long porch made a shady spot for the loafers; in winter they gathered around the pot-bellied stove inside. After Mr. Davis's death, the building burned to the ground. "