Note 125 — Old Chelsea. (continued 2)

This house was kept, in 1790, by a Mrs. Mary Jacob, a New England woman, and I have seen a letter from her to her brother in America, in which she says, in her old-fashioned spelling: “I keap a Coffe Hous, which I can Scarcely macke a bit of Bred for myself, but it Ennabels me to keep a home for my Sons.” This letter is prized as a relic by the family, none of whom have any notion of how “Polly Cummings”—her maiden name in New England—found her way to Chelsea and to Don Saltero’s!