By Lauren McCormack, executive director of the Marblehead Museum
For much of the late 19th century, the row of buildings from 96 to 104 Washington St. was known as Drug Store Row. Three druggists — William H. Shepard (96 Washington St.), William M. Lemmon (98 Washington St.) and William Goodwin (104 – now 102 – Washington St.), vied for the town’s pharmaceutical customers. Last December, the descendants of William Goodwin donated items from their ancestor’s store, as well as a thoroughly-researched family history, containing numerous stories recorded by Maria Power Knowland Goodwin (1879-1961).
William Goodwin learned the apothecary trade by apprenticing to John Roundey, who ran the drug store at 104 Washington St. that Goodwin later took over. The Goodwins — William, his wife, children and a Nova Scotian female servant — lived in the two stories above the store. A brother, Charles, took the first-floor side apartment until it became their son John’s dentist office in 1905.
Like most pharmacies of the time, Goodwin’s contained a soda fountain. Maria recalled that staff “mixed sodas from 50/50 milk and cream, + syrup and soda water. We didn’t have ice cream.”
When not seeking a refreshing beverage, Marbleheaders visited Goodwin’s for “Pure Drugs, Medicines and Chemicals, Fancy and Toilet Articles, Cigars and Tobacco.” As Maria wrote, that was “everything usually kept in a first class [sic] drugstore.” Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, Goodwin took out newspaper ads to publicize his stock, including Syrup of Fig laxative, cough syrups and Sarsaparilla [sic] to “purify the blood.”
Among the mementos the family kept, and have recently donated to the museum, are apothecary bottles of sherry wine and lime water. At the time, sherry supposedly cured “nervous prostration and lassitude,” while lime water was used to treat “dyspepsia and weakness of the stomach.”
After a short illness, William Goodwin died on March 3, 1910. The next day, Marblehead Messenger reported, “His signboard has been so long a landmark, his presence behind the counter so constant, that it is hard to realize that he, too, has passed over to the great majority.”
Lauren McCormack is the executive director of the Marblehead Museum. “From the Vault” is a partnership between the Marblehead Museum and the Current.
