The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1893-12-09


tions Served.
There were strange goings on in the
second floor front room at No. 176 1-2
Middle street during yesterday. Old
citizens held up their hands in amaze
ment at the spectacle of change in one
Portland institution which had long
seemed to them immutable. Mr.. John
M. Todd was moving his barber shop.
Before relating, for the benefit of life
long customers, the new place which
Mr.. Todd is favoring with his presence,
it will be interesting to note some things
about the old place. 1t was on the 10th
day of October, 1s45 that Mr.. Todd first
took that second floor room. He was
then young mamie is now 73-and
little thought that it was to be his place
of business for forty-eight years, and
that when he finally should leave it, no
man in Portland could boast of having
been in business for himself i'll one
place, for so many years.
The room from which Mr.. Todd was
moving yesterday is not the identical
room into which he first moved. The
great fire of 1861 laid the whole block
low, and for IS months the shop was In
other places. The day after the fire, Mr..
Todd went to Cape Elizabeth and Sc
cured travelling daguerreotype saloon.
This he stationed in front of the post
Office site, put four chairs into it, and
did thriving business. 1t was the
only shop in the burned district. Mis-
chievous boys used to get on to the
and by jogging it shake the chairs so
that shaving became a difficult opera
ton; and then the BARRIERS would have
to leave their customers and drive the
boys away.
Finally the block was rebuilt, and Mr..
Todd got back to the old stand, which
he was leaving yesterday.
For the first fifteen years after setting
up in 1915, there was not shop in. the
city north of him; and there were but
Saco, Biddeford and Saccarappa, where
there were hairdressers. Most of the
country trade came to Portland. In the
city there was but one barber to every
three thousand of population, while now
there is one to every 500 OF 600.
Before, the days of the letter carriers
the junction of Middle and Exchange
streets was the most freqented place in
the city. At mail time the young bloods
of the town all congregated there, as we'll
as the solid business men. A store on
the corner bore the appetizing sign Rat
Soup" and the boys" of that day knew
well its meaning. Of course all these
things made Mr.. Todd's stand very de-
sira BILE; and he estimates that the estab-
lishment of the free delivery systemmade
a difference of thousand dollars year
in his income. - sar gSs tfE,st
In these forty-eight years long array
of men have been in Mr.. Todd's chairs
men who helped make Portland prosper
GUS and famous, men who have added
to the reputation of the State of Maine,
men who will be famous in history.
There were acknowledgements, the Greeleys,
Deacon Swan, f. o. j. Smith, John Neal,
John B. Brown, General Samuel Fess-
enden and his more famous son William
Pitt Fessenden, L homasss Deblois, DIR. E. H.
Chaplin, the famous divine, Israel Wash
burne, John A. Poor, Benjamin F.
Butler, Justice Nathan Clifford, Lot
NJ. Morrill,, Hannibal Hamlin, jefferson
Davis and James G. Blaine.
II suppose" ventured the PRESS man,
as Mr.. Todd dwelt lovingly over remi-
niscences of these men, that you had
to be pretty particular abont shaving
such men,"
Not at all. Not at ALL" was the en-
phatic reply, "men of brains are not
particular about those things. 1t is only
the little dudes that are fussy."
Mr.. Todd recalls that in at least three
Portland families, the Churchills,
Foxes and Woodburys, he has had four
generations for his customers. Captain
W. Woodbury. was a customer over forty
years ago, then came his son w. W.
Woodbury., then the grandson, Theodore
C.Woodbury, and finally the great-grand-
son, Mr.. Theodore C. Woodbury's little
son. who comes to the old stand to have
his hair cut.
Mr.. Warren Sparrow is the oldest GUS
toner. He began coming in 1915, and
Mr.. Todd asserts that in all that time
he had never complained of razor pull
ing Mr.. Enoch Thompson is the second
Oldest customer
In regard to the help he has employed,
Mr.. Todd has been conservative, as in
other things. In 1857 Mr.. John H. B.
Morrill, began working for linn, and con-
tinued sixteen years. Yesterday, when
the old place was being broken up, it
was Mr.. F. S. Morrill,, son of the old
employe, who was serving the last chair
In the later years the old customers
have dropped away very fast. For the
fifty months preceding 1890 Mr.. Todd
counted one month in the obituary
columns of the papers,
The street has changed greatly When
Mr.. Todd started Ira P. harrington, Esq,
was starting a. ready made cIothino