[150] time became your grandmother: the other a son—that was myself. No other child did my mother have. When I was in my fourth year, my father's family were all taken sick, except myself, with a fever; all recovered except my mother: but, alas! she died; and O! how to this moment my heart aches for little children deprived of their kind, careful and prudent mother. My father, again a widower, remained so in Worcester four years; then having an opportunity, sold his place to Dr. John Green, and bought a tavern stand in West Cambridge, near the old meeting-house, and with his children moved to his native place. Soon after he married. for a third wife, the widow Elizabeth Bowman. She had three children by her first husband, and owned a black wench and a little brat.1 By this woman my father had three children, and with my sister and myself mixed up with them made a large family, and a tavern continually filled with company of all grades—a poor place to bring up children, 1 guess you will say. But here was I—brought up or rather dragged up in my woolen shirt and leather breeches, and a like uniform. My father gave me what learning time and circumstances would admit, aiming at nothing more than that I might be able to do common business. He had no man's help but mine, and it kept me in constant employ. He had at this time a place [fifty years ago it was usual to call a common farm a place] in Lexington, belonging to my mother-in-law, which he carried on and had the profits.—At this place I often went to work. The house was rented to a mechanic, where I used to board. When I was in my nineteenth year I was sent there in the spring to work. The woman of the house had been confined, and her nurse was still with her. The nurse was young, and so was I, and in the course of the week which I was to work there, often speaking to each other, we had formed a sort of acquaintance. When my week was out, not having said all I wished to, I asked the privilege of paying her a visit at her father's, and not being denied I was careful to pay it, which only made another to be desirable; and being well treated by all the family, my visits were made as opportunity offered through spring, summer and fall; and, to be short, until I was my own man [one and twenty—two full years; and this was two or three years before the final consummation!] By this time there was a mutual desire that we might spend our lives together; but how could it be done? I was poor —my partner was not rich; and to think of going to live together in
This text is part of:
1 Gov. Hill says the possession of this accession of blacks was regarded in the light of an annoyance. It was common in those times for the more wealthy inhabitants to own slaves. They were tenderly treated and well cared for, but the boys suffered with cold in winter when exposed to out-door work, and were lazy and faithless in summer. Thomas Adams, the father, with the younger children of the third wife, about the time of the beginning of the American Revolution, prepared to remove to his Cambridge farm at Ashburnham. As late as 1794, Mrs. Blanchard, his daughter, kept tavern in a house formerly his, in West Cambridge, on the old road to the colleges. The father of Gov. Hill removed in 1798 to Ashburnham, and the remainder of the article in the Farmer's Monthly Visitor is devoted to that place.
Boston: David Clapp and son. 564 Washington Street, 1880.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.