The New England general store was as much a community institution as the church or town hall. Familes relied on the store not only for all their commercial needs but also for many of their social ones as well. It was at the corner store that they picked up their mail, exchanged the latest gossip and haggled over a few items from jumbled diversity of the storekeeper's stock.

Jabez Corner carries on this tradition as an on-line community resource. We will offer a selection of informative Web essays and exhibits, from Vanished Plymouth, which contains pictures of the town's past that we did not discover in time to include in our two Arcadia Press Images of America titles, Plymouth (2002) and Plymouth Labor and Leisure (2005) to the history of the Bahamas.

Come on in, look around and sit a spell. You may find something you like. To begin, there is a brief introduction to the Corner and Jane C. Baker's The Little Town, which contains memories of Jabez Corner a century ago. If you are interested in the natural history of Plymouth, Mrs. Catherine Hedge's Wildflowers of Plymouth (1904) provides a thorough botanical survey of the town. On the Miscellaneous Shelf , you will find an assortment of articles about Plymouth and her later, post-Pilgrim history .

An area of the world beyond old Jabez Corner that we are very fond of is Freeport, Grand Bahama. Now if Plymouth, Massachusetts has produced far more history than can be consumed locally and has long been obliged to export large quantities of the stuff, Freeport is quite the reverse. There history is very thin on the ground. I have gathered what I could find of that rare commodity, Grand Bahamian history, and made it available at Bahamian Fragments.

© 2001 James W. Baker — Updated February 3, 2008

jimwbaker@comcast.net [note: new email - Adelphia has died]