Williamstown Town (part 3 of 3)

Both Thomas and Mary K-oe were members of the first church here when Mr. Swift was settled in 1779 ; and as there is no list of the church-members previous to that time, and as, after Mr. Welch went away to the army in the autumn of 1775, all church matters were in confusion for four years, it is best to regard Mr. Swift's flock of 1779 as the primitive sheep of the place. Forty of these were husbands and wives, of whom eleven couples continued for life in the communion of the church, and nine couples were dismissed, or removed from the town. Of the remaining twenty-one, nine continued in their relation to the local church till their death, and twelve withdrew elsewhere. Tradition still continues to whisper kind words about the family of Thomas Eoe at the south part, but the inexorable silence will soon set in. The first and only well-authenticated case of '' bundling " in the early times of West Hoosac has been preserved in connection with the hospitable house of Thomas Roe. Old Aaron Deming told Dan Foster, who owned and occupied the Roe place during a long and reputable life, that he slept in the Roe house the first night he ever slept in the town, and that he found a couple there who were sparking and bundled ; and that he slept with them on the same bed, the young lady on the front side, and the " Sparker " next, and he on the outside ; " But I didn't covet her ! " The second son, Welles Roe, born Dec. 29, 1779, was killed while driving into the barn on a load of hay, after a manner somewhat common in Kew England in the olden time. The eldest son, Elisha, married Electa Hill, of Goshen, Connecticut, a daughter of Ambrose and Lucy Beach Hill. They moved to Medina, New York, and had eleven children between 1799 and 1819. Four of these were still living in 1885. One of them, Mrs. Roxanna Roe Pratt, at that date resided at 3823 Ellis Avenue, Chicago, and communicated with parties in Williamstown on points relating to her ancestry. Elisabeth Roe, a sister of Elisha and Welles, married, in 1793, Rev. Aaron Simmons, a Baptist minister ; and another sister married Mr. Martin, of Bennington ; and still another, Mr. Calkins, of Waterbnry, Vermont. The following letter, this day received from Mrs. Roxanna Roe Pratt, a granddaughter of Thomas Roe, herself born on the old farm in 1812, printed exactly as she wrote it, may interest somebody long after both writer and recipient (to use her words) " have past to their long home " : -

Dear Sir, Your letter in answer to my daughters husband Mr. Steele was received with many thanks, for your kindness in giving us the information concerning the Roe family, Thomas Hoe was my Granfather, I was the daughter of his son Elisha Roe. You were correct in the number of children of my Grandfather, my Father hatl eleven children. I was the youngest of five girls, and all have pi\st to their long home, but myself only waiting until the shadows are a little longer grown. I have the Old family Bible of my Grandfathers, it is so old that some of letters and dates are Illegible. I know my Grandfather was in the Revolutionary war, but Imve no proof of it, but through you, my older brothers used to play Soldiers with his Regimentals I was quite young when they died. I think my Grandfather was eighty seven, and my Grandmother eighty two, I remember them veiy well, The reason of this request, my daughters wished to join the Daughters of the Revolution. There is a large Society of them in this city, of all the prominent familes of the eastern states, and are quite Enthusiastic so all join that can. You remember my daughter Mrs Sidley in one of her visits to see her son William while he was in College, told me of your kindness in taking her to ride down through South Williamstown, by the old Homestead, and I feel very much gratified for your kindness in so doing, my Grandson William is a lovely man, he is a Lawyer in a very prominent firm here, and doing very nicely.

He and his Mother sends their kindest regards to you, hoping to see you this summer at our Worlds Fair, and they will give you a most cordial welcome at their home, Please excuse my long epistle explaining family matters, you can p^.o t),.. (\](\ hand a little shaky, again thanking you I remain your friend

10. In one of the preceding chapters we have learned some interesting facts in relation to Samuel Kellogg, who, by the time the first meeting-house was built in 1768, was well established on his farm, situated just half-way between the east end of the village and the east boundary of the town, and who would doubtless consider himself, and be considered by others, entitled to a pew of, at least, the average respectability; especially as he and his wife, Chloe Bacon, were both in personal covenant with the church, and as they had had three children when the " seating of the meetinghouse '^ took place. Samuel Kellogg, the son of Benjamin, Avas born in old Hadley (long the seat of the family), June 9, 1734, and, like many another young man of his time, dropped down the Connecticut River into the state below, and crept back into Massachusetts by the Housatonic. The fact is, the direct mountain barrier in Massachusetts between the Connecticut and the Hoosac and the Housatonic was, for a long time, too formidable for direct assault. Kellogg came up from Canaan, Connecticut, in 17G1, along a path that had l)ei*n already, for ten years. i)retty well frcfiuented ])v ' young men both in peace and war. The place where he sat down, after some shiftings, was on the rude path between Fort Massachusetts and West Hoosac Fort, midway between the two. It was the present road. It was the path, in reference to which the West Hoosac proprietors voted, on the 19th of April, 1762, " To clear a road to the East town for a cart to get along." The surveyors, in laying out the fifty-acre lots of the first division, caused ten of those lots to abut at their north end upon this road, while they stretched upon the south towards Saddle Mountain; and north of this road to the Hoosac Eiver were two fifty-acre lots (Nos. 26 and 27) and several meadow lots. Kellogg began on the north end of No. 19, but still on the south side of the fort road, because the land was a little higher on that side. His first log house stood a little back of some present poplar trees planted by his son, and now (1893) very old. He bought, at various times, adjoining lands on both sides the road, and extending northwards as far as the river, to and along which it was only possible to pass, at first, by jumping from one prostrate log to another on account of the wetness of tl^e land, until he had compacted there a farm of about 170 acres.

Of course, the first thing for him to do, as for each other pristine settler throughout the town, was to chop down some trees at some selected point, and thus at once to make a place, and get the materials for a log cabin for shelter and an incipient home ; and the next thing was to clear off more ground for some arable land. All this involved hard labor, and much of it, and the time could not be essentially hastened ; and nothing but the plough could determine, beyond all question, the quality of the soil. Kellogg found his land south of the fort road, and near it, to be very clayey upon trial. When he came to be able to put up a framed house, and a two-story one at that, on his slowly expanding arable acres, he selected a site on the opposite side of the road, where the land, too, proved to be, and has continued to be till this day, of a more tractable and fertile quality.

Pretty direct and reliable tradition maintains that Samuel Kellogg, while subduing his homestead in the early years, sometimes felt obliged to take refuge o' nights in one or other of the two forts which were about equally accessible to him. The Indians continued to prowl along their old war-paths even after the gen,eral Peace of Paris of 1763. In the course of twenty years or so, Kellogg became possessed of another farm southeast of his homestead and at more than a mile interval from it, on the high and excellent land toward Saddle Mountain, partly in the present town of North Adams, to which and across which ran then, as now, a road parallel to the riverroad, hugging tlie hills. Samuel Kellogg, Junior, inherited, on his father's death in 1788, both the homestead and the hill-farm, and some account of these lands, as typical of others like them throughout the town, may, perhaps, be found on pages to follow. The elder Kellogg is believed by his descendants to be in the direct line of Joseph Kellogg, one of tlie original settlers in old Hadley in 1660, a Puritanic family, and, as first exemplified in Williamstown, intelligent and enterprising and prosperous and patriotic.

Samuel Kellogg was prominent among the proprietors here from the first, sometimes presided at their meetings, and more often was assessor or other officer, and chairman of their important committees. As the questions that slowly culminated in the American Revolution were developed one after another, he took upon them a decidedly patriotic stand, perhaps in part on account of the warm Scotch blood that flowed in his veins, and certainly in sympathy with his relatives of the same name in Hadley and Hatfield. As the war drew on, he went to Boston several times as a member of the local " Committee of Safety " in Williamstown, and on other business connected with the colony; and he was in the battle of Bennington with nearly every other able-bodied man of the town. His wife's father, Daniel Bacon, was killed in that battle, as were two other citizens of the town. It is believed by his grandson, Giles Bacon Kellogg, that he was commissioned a justice of the peace here under the Crown before the war broke out, and that he bore the title of " Esquire " from that source ; at any rate, he served as a justice and bore that title after the war was over ; and there is very little, if any, doubt that he tried in that capacity a gang of counterfeiters that had operated, or were supposed to have operated, in the depths of the Hopper. They were betrayed by the smoke arising from their fires, and were arrested on legal process issued by him. Giles B. Kellogg (Williams College, 1829) writes as follows : " I know there was a mysterious chest kept locked or nailed up in the closet of the southeast chamber of our house, which was said to contain the tools taken from the counterfeiters and delivered to grandfather. I never heard what became of the counterfeiters or knew what became of the tools."

Samuel Kellogg died when he was fifty-four years old, leaving much of his projjerty and of his position to his son of the same name, who was born Sept. 29, 1766. The father had a half-brother, Ebenezer Kellogg, who outlived him more than forty years, and who made his home with him the latter part of his life, and who exemplifies a sort of character considerably common in New England during the last part of the last century and the beginning part of this. His wife was Filene Fuller, and they lived at the eastward till after her death, when, having no children, he came over the mountain to his brother's, and never after removed, but died here about 1831. He was a man of fine physical frame and of no ordinary intelligence, and was exceedingly fond of the unbroken forests. He was a great hunter and fisherman, and claimed to be a skilful rootdoctor. After his brother's death, he would sometimes leave his nephew's house and be absent for a week at a time, hunting and fishing and searching for roots in the woods and mountains. He came and went easily, making no reports of his journeys, nor seeming to think of them as worthy of any chronicle. But he had a good memory of the earlier times and persons, was fond of reporting the epitaphs of the Kelloggs in the old Hadley burying-ground, and some of the facts above noted in relation to Samuel Kellogg have come down through this singular informant.

11. Daniel Bacon, the father-in-law of Samuel Kellogg, was from Middletown, Connecticut, a blacksmith by trade, son of Nathaniel Bacon, 2d, of Middletown, and the best known of the three men from Williamstown killed in the battle of Bennington. His daughter Chloe married Kellogg, in March, 1764, and some time after her husband's death, in 1788, she married Thomas Henderson, a farmer of Bennington, and lived there until 1829, when she died, aged eighty-five. She was, accordingly, twenty-three years old when she married Kellogg, and her father must have been older than the average incomer when he settled here. His ultimate farm consisted of two fifty-acre lots of the first division, - Nos. 61 and 63, - adjoining end to end, and lying directly east of Taylor's Crotch. His nearest neighbor was Absalom Blair, who was with him and Kellogg in Bennington Battle. Bacon's father preceded him in the buying and selling of lands in Berkshire, as appears from certain deeds in the old registry. For example, Nathaniel Bacon, 2d, of Middletown, gave, under the usual formula, his lots in " New Framingham " (Lanesboro) to his son Jacob, 20 Aug., 1761 ^ and this Jacob lived, in 1765, in "Yokuntown" (Lenox), and, still later, sold the lands in Lanesboro to Elijah Hurlburt. Daniel came to Williamstown before Jacob did, and in September, 1766, bought of Samuel Payen, of Water Street, fifty-acre lot 61, for £23; and apparently, some time after, bought No. 63, adjoining, for £40, of Aaron Bacon, who may likely have been another brother, though we know little about him. The description of No. 63 in the deed from Aaron to Daniel is worth quoting: "bounded West on highway,

Willi Amstown

East on land belonging to Jonathan Kilborn, South on land belonging to Josiah Wright, North on a highway." This second ''highway " is what is now called the " Blair road." The cellar of Bacon's original house, on No. 63, is still visible enough, near a spring of living water, on the south side of the lot. There is an old plum tree or two still growing near the cellar-wall. The next house built on that lot was on a knoll considerably further north, - a brick house, in which Cai)tain Isaac Latham lived for many yeai-s, - but the present farm-house is still further north, and on the very edge of the Blair road. Daniel Bacon seems to have been a stirring man, and ultimately reached the rank of "Sergeant" in his militia company, and would doubtless have been fairly seated in the meetinghouse by 17G8, which was nine years before his honored death.

Though in somewhat rude lines, Jacob Bacon also left deeply cut memorials of himself in the town of his final choice of residence. He lived and died on what is now " Farm B," belonging to John B. Gale (Williams College, 1842), originally No. IX of the first division of the fifty-acre lots, on the Green River road. He died Dec. 27, 1819, in his eightieth year. His wife, Lois, died Nov. 23, 1818, in her fifty-ninth year. Their son Stephen, born Feb. 28, 1771, made his home well up into the Hopper, where his posterity have resided ever since. His wife's name was Mehitable. They were married Feb. 2, 1789, when the groom was not quite eighteen. Their son Stephen was born Oct. 7, 1804, and practically spent his life on the Upper Hopper Brook. He once told the present writer, that, when he was a small boy, Aaron Wright lived still further up the brook than the Bacon place ; indeed, somebody has lived beyond the Bacons during the whole of this centur}', Stephen Pettitt being the last long-lived and well-known occupant of this obscure ultima Thule. The second Stephen Bacon said, also, once, to the writer, that he remembered his grandfather Jacob perfectly well, that he visited him often on " Farm B," as it was then, and that he once gave him a penny ! The present Stephen Bacon, the third of that name in regular succession, an intelligent and enterprising and excellent man, is still cultivating the ancestral acres, and many more well-rounded ones in extension of them ; in fact, the Upi^er Hopper would no longer be itself without some hospitable family, with that well-known name to give its greeting, and, perchance, its succor, to the passing wayfarer towards, or in return from, the summit of Greylock. Still, it was an old soldier of Fort ^lassachusetts, Elkanah Parris, becoming a Quaker after the Peace of Paris, leaving his own-built ''regulation" house in <^1i" vilLige, on Green T>i"v"v

(still standing), who, with his wife Grace, and four children, first followed up the beautiful brook, and chose the site and built the house, with its white-oak sills from north of the Hoosac, in which four generations of the Bacons have already dwelt.

Besides this Parris house, called now for three-quarters of a century the " Bingham house," and which is still owned and occupied by Chloe Bingham, there are two other original " regulation " houses standing intact in this village, very similar to this one ; namely, the " Simonds house," originally built on house lot 22, but long ago moved across the street to a high position opposite, and now forming the west end of the home of Mrs. Patrick Kelly ; and the second one, now forming the L part of the old Bissell Sherman house, itself erected in 1797. The General Court required, in 1750, of each purchaser of a house lot, in order to maintain his landed rights in the "propriety," that he build a house on it, within a specified time, " at least 18 feet long and 7 foot stud."

12. It was just fifty years after the big immigration into New England of the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, in 1718, that the first meeting-house was built in Williamstown. In the mean time, the original Worcester contingent had colonized Blandford and Coleraine bodily, and large numbers of families had gone into Western and other towns in Worcester County, and there was a considerable tendency, from the original New Hampshire settlements, of these people into these towns of western Massachusetts ; and Berkshire County at last, and even Williamstown, felt the impulse of their coming. Absalom Blair, with Martha Young, his wife, both from Western, and she a sister of the Williamstown Youngs, who have been already considered, were among the Hrst of the Scotch-Irish people to settle in Williamstown, and the very first to become anywise prominent here. Abraham Blair was one of the soldiers who distinguished himself for bravery and endurance in the famous siege of the Irish Londonderry in 1689, and he was made free of taxes thereafter anywhere within the British dominions. His son Robert, then thirtyfour years old, was one of the Worcester incomers of 1718, and died there Oct. 14, 1774, in the ninety-first year of his age. His wife, Isabel, died nine years before, aged eighty-two. They left a very large posterity in Worcester and in western Massachusetts generally. There was a Robert, Junior, in Worcester, who had sons, - Robert and David, - and these also had very large families. There were other Blairs besides Robert - a plenty of them - in the great immigration of 1718. There was James Blair, "a man of gigantic stature and of fearless courage," who was one of the pristine settlers of Londonderry, New Hampshire. Ensign David Blair died in Western in 1804, aged ninety-six. He was, consequently, ten years old at the incoming. John Blair also died in Western (now Warren) in 1796, aged eighty-six, and was thus eight years old in 1718. He was the father of Ezekiel Blair, born in April, 1742, who came to Williamstown and bought his farm in 1764. Blandford, also, was full of Blairs, among others Deacon Robert, of the Presbyterian church there, who owned and livod on the "Govv" ^nvl 'l'''"l tltr're in 1802.

Absalom Blair, who came ultimately to be Captain in his militia company, a patriotic man throughout the Revolution, the father of ten children, was born in November, 1742, and died in April, 1811, at the age of sixty-nine. His widow survived him eighteen years. He settled on Green River but a little way below its crotch, and the broad and fertile farm went by the name of " Blair's " for more than a century. It consisted of two or three meadow lots and two fifty-acre lots. The Green River was bridged to reach the house, which stood on meadow lot No. 62, on the north side of the road whoro is now an orchard, whilf tlie new and l>f'tt'pr lionsp w:is built on higher ground on the south side of the road opposite to the old one. This Blair road, about half a mile long, running due east, strikes at right angles the Stratton road running due south from the east end of the Main Street at Markham's. Absalom Blair seems to have possessed the main characteristics of the Scotch-Irish people in New England : namely, they were rather rough in speech and manner, wilful even if not imperious in temper; while not broadly intelligent, penetrating in intellect; industrious and frugal; of strong prejudices not unlike grudges; taking easily to nonmonarchical forms of governmeiit, and lurching heavily against all classes specially privileged by law ; as compared with the descendants of the Pilgrims and the Puritans not peculiarly religious, but perhaps peculiarly attached to their old Presbyterian forms. As a rule, too, they had very large families, and were apt to live till they were very old ; and as a general thing, they did not seem to put up into as high a notch on the scale of the virtues as it might always well hang in the virtue of personal cleanliness !

Absalom Blair's oldest son, and the inheritor of his farm, and the transmitter of his name in this town to this day, was William Blair, born in October, 1765. He was old enough at the time of the battle of Bennington - namely, twelve years old - to be set by his anxious mother, who lived to tell the tale to the next generation, to listen intently out of doors that August afternoon for sounds from the northward. The boy asseverated at the time, and ever afterward, and his mother believed him and reported it down to her old age (she died in 1829), and his father on his return did not discredit it, that he heard distinctly, at considerable intervals, volleys of what he supposed were cannon ; and although cannon played a relatively small part in the battle of Bennington, they were fired a good many times, and especially a good many times in the second fight ; and so the boy's testimony becomes credible, particularly as confirmed by that of Samuel Burbank, who, though two miles further south, compensated that disadvantage by keeping his ear to the ground for long spaces of time.

William Blair married the most interesting girl there was in William stown at the time ; and she continued to be, perhaps, the most interesting woman in Williamstown till her death, June 26, 1864, in her ninety-second year. Her name was Sally Train, and she became Mrs. Blair July 17, 1792. He was twenty-five, and she was eighteen. Her mother was the first child born in Williamstown, Eachel Simonds, born April 8, 1753, whose own childhood was nurtured amid constant hazards, French and Indian stratagems, frequent removals for greater safety from the home on the west side of Hemlock Brook to the fort upon the east side, - including stays in the fort for months together ; when she was three years and a half old, three men from the fort were killed by Indians on the banks of the brook within a stone's throw of either home or fort; and as she grew up towards womanhood under kindlier conditions, and in a larger and better home, as there were apparently no eligible young men for her to marry, she married Thomas Train, who had been a soldier or officer in both forts, an excellent man, but twenty or twenty-five years her senior. We have already, in another connection, pointed out the place of their brief home together as marked at present by the sturdy elm tree, and told the story of his strange journey to Virginia and sudden death there, leaving here a youthful widow with her infant daughter, Sally Train.

Mrs. Train remained a widow but for a few years with her little daughter - both young together - when she was married to Benjamin Skinner, a young man who came up here from Colchester in 1775 with an older brother, Tompson J. Skinner, sons of the Rev. Thomas Skinner, of West Chester, a parish in Colchester. The older brother was destined to play a great part in Williamstown, and to become celebrated in both senses of that word throughout Massachusetts; the younger one, who was less gifted and consequently overshadowed, became, notwithstanding, a very useful and prominent man during a long life. Mrs. Train's second marriage proved happy and fruitful ; and Sally grew up with the elder of the Skinner children, of whom there were, in all, three daughters and four sons. Each of the daughters married distinguished gentlemen, and two of the sons filled also large spaces in the public eye. The other two sons are mentioned in an uncomplimentary way in the will of Colonel Benjamin Simonds, who was their grandfather. The epitaph of Mrs. Skinner is quotable : " Mrs. Rachel Skinner, amiable consort of Mr. Benjamin Skinner, b. 8 April 1753, died 29 Nov. 1802." Mr. and Mrs. Skinner united with the church together in 1780. He became one of the deacons in 1802, and continued as such till his death in 1828, aged seventy-eight. He was also appointed postmaster in 1819. Just a year after the death of his first wife, he married Deodama Noble ; and one son, George Noble Skinner (Williams College, 1827), was the sole fruit of that union. "Aunt Skinner," as she was always called in her old age, is still remembered by many persons not yet called old.

shared them at first with her mother-in-law, Martha Young Blair, who survived the marriage of her eldest son for thirty-six years, and continued to sustain these responsibilities with unusual cheerfulness and vigor, until they were shared in her old age by her unmarried daughter, Maria Blair, who was born in November, 1803. Besides this daughter there were two others, Alice and Harriet, and six sons, two of whom, Bernard, 1825, and George Train, 1833, were graduates of Williams College. The latter, taking up his residence in Troy directly after graduation, studied law, held the office of city clerk for several years, was chosen surrogate and held the office for ten years, was appointed postmaster of Troy in 1861, and in 1865 paymaster in the United States army. He came to Williamstown on business in 1867, was taken suddenly ill, and died amid the familiar scenes of his youth, April 3, aged fifty-seven. Bernard Blair, the only other graduate of that surname in the first century of the College, spent his entire life after leaving college in Salem, New York, both studying and practising law there, was elected a member of the Twenty-seventh Congress from that district, and usefully served his generation as president of a local bank and railroad, and in all other relations of life. Edwin Blair, another brother, ultimately came to carry on the farm, and to furnish a home for his -maiden sister Maria; but not succeeding well financially, and marrying also late in life, he became melancholic, and committed suicide. At the present writing, Deacon Henry Blair, born in May, 1812, and the last survivor of the children of William and Sally, and Austin Blair, his son^ named for his uncle, Austin Wing Blair, who was the youngest child of William and Sally, are the only men left in Williamstown of that once prevalent name. Alice Blair, the oldest child of William and Sally, born in September, 1796, still remembered by at least one old lady in Williamstown (Mrs. James Smedley) as a beautiful young lady riding gracefully, was married to Hiram Bacon of the family but just now characterized in these pages, and they removed with their family to Indiana in 1822. Many of the later descendants of the Blairs, and also of the Kelloggs and other families, migrated to Georgia, Vermont, and settled down there.

13. William Horsford has perhaps been postponed in this imaginary order of seating to a later place than was his due accorded to him by the committee at the time. He was a very early comer. He was one in a select company of soldiers sent up hither by the colony of Connecticut as the best place at which to guard its own frontiers from the French and Indian raiders from Canada. It was easy for these to drop down the Housatonic into Connecticut, if they could once get by the two forts on the Hoosac, and the watershed a few miles to the south of them. One such raid actually penetrated through Stockbridge into the border towns below. But William Horsford and his brothiBr Josiah and Nehemiah Smedley and Allen Curtiss and John and Jonathan Kilbon, all from Litchfield or its immediate vicinity, had been up to West Hoosac to prepare for themselves and their families a new home on the soil some considerable time before they, with others, enlisted into this select company of militia. It was in the latter part of the lull between the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle and the fresh outbreak of the war in 1754. It was, indeed, their individual sense of the hazards of proceeding under their purchase of houselot-rights, some of which had been vended by Massachusetts in Litchfield and its neighborhood, that led these young men to return to Connecticut and to report on the prospect of things here, and then to enlist with many more under public authority and come back to help garrison the West Hoosac Fort. Xot a great deal more was done in the way of subduing fresh house lots, although a few kept along with their work in summer, having the two forts as a base of safety and supplies, until the news came of the battle of Quebec in 1759. Then soon all was astir again. Seventeen hundred and sixty marks the beginning of settlements in West Hoosac on a considerable scale.

William Horsford married in Litchfield, in 1759, Esther Smedley, born March 20, 1737, eldest sister to Nehemiah Smedley ; and their first-bom, Esther, saw the light in West Hoosac, May 19, 1760. Some, who were ignorant of the facts in regard to Benjamin Simonds, who already had four children native to this soil, used to claim that Esther Horsford was the first child of English parentage born in the town. Eight brothers and sisters followed in due succession, including Rhoda, the last, bom May 2.3, 1779. The mother of these children died March 1, 1791. The primitive record ends, - '* Elisabeth Horsford the aged Died May 28, 1781." This was unquestionably the mother of W^illiam and Josiah Horsford, who had accompanied, or at least followed, them into the wilderness.

The original holder of house lot 44, the lot directly north across Main Street from the West College, was Josiah Dean, of Canaan, Connecticut, and he sold the lot, " and all appertaining to it, that is, part of West Hoosuck," to Daniel and William Horsford, both of Canaan, for £260 of then lawful Connecticut money, JVov. i, 1752. William Iwught out Daniel's share, that is, one half of No. 44 and all after-drafts, for £26 of Massachusetts money (which was then silv»M^. F<'1». 2. 1761. Daniel is called in this deed "Senior" - undoubtedly father to William and Josiah, and husband to " Elisabeth Horsford the aged." The interesting point to notice is, that, the day before this sale to the Horsfords, namely, Oct. 31, 1752, Samuel Smedley, of Litchfield, bought of Ezekiel Hinds, of Stockbridge (then of Fort Massachusetts), for £27, house lot 1 "and all appertaining," etc. Samuel Smedley was the father of Nehemiah ; and the latter came into full possession of No. 1, March 21, 1758, in consequence of the father's death in the mean time and by virtue of a deed then executed to him by the widow and the eldest son, John, jointly. Scarcely any doubt can remain upon a mind weighing closely all the dates and circumstances, that it was in the spring of 1753 when these Connecticut young men first crossed the watershed between the Housatonic and the Hoosac, and made some little beginnings on their respective lots, - the main fact of their coming about that time, and for that very purpose, being clearly testified to long afterwards by Nehemiah Smedley's oldest son, Levi, born in 1764. It will perhaps be remembered by the careful reader of the preceding chapters, that the first proprietors' meeting was convened Dec. 5, 1753, at the house of Seth Hudson on house lot 9. The proprietors certainly present at that time were Allen Curtiss, Isaac Wyman, Seth Hudson, Jonathan Meacham, Ezekiel Foster, Jabez Warren, Samuel Taylor, Gideon Warren, Thomas Train, Josiah Dean, and Ebenezer Graves. It must not be inferred from the attendance of these eleven men at that meeting, that all of them had already built houses on their house lots; most of them, indeed, were then lodged in Fort Massachusetts as soldiers, as was Isaac Wyman, then commanding there, and yet made clerk and treasurer of the proprietors at that time ; the only houses that are certainly knoivn to have been already built on the house lots at the date of that meeting were Simonds's on No. 22, Curtiss's on No. 13, and Hudson's on No. 9; each of these three was on one side or the other of Hemlock Brook ; and Elisha Higgins, a soldier in Fort Massachusetts, had purchased, for £20, No. 12,, directly on the brook the north side of Main Street, as Curtiss's lot was opposite on the south side. Higgins's purchase was Oct. 12, 1753. Higgins subsequently bought house lot 17, and made it his permanent homestead. This is the second lot west of Curtiss's, fairly on the present Danforth plateau south side of Main Street.

When William Horsford came back to West Hoosac to stay, which was about the time when Allen Curtiss went back to Canaan to stay, although the latter did not sell out his house lot 13 until March, 1762, the former began to buy and sell lots all over the town (as did also his compeers), though he never sold his homestead house lot 44 until he left the town for good in the last decade of the century. As his family increased, he put up on 44 a good-sized framed house, which is still standing enlarged in another part of the village. He was active in all the affairs of the propriety till the incorporation of the town in 1765, in all whose further affairs he was patriotic and influential for about thirty years longer. Why he went, whither he went, and exactly when he went are questions that cannot now be answered. His wife died here in 1791, and after that there has been found no note or sign of him in Williamstown. On the popular subscription-paper for the new meeting-house, started in September, 1796, the original of which is in the writers possession, Horsford's name does not appear, although had he been at that time a resident, it would naturally and almost certainly be found there, inasmuch as the second meeting-house was built l)y the proj)rietors as well as the first one, and yet by subscription. Both Horsford and his wife united with the church in 1781. She died in its communion ten years later ; while the letter " r " appended to his name in the manual shows that he had " removed to distant parts." It is to be presumed, and will probably some day be ascertained, that he passed on with many of his neighbors, and perhaps some or all of his children, into the new state of Vermont. Tlie attractive house lot 44 passed shortly into possession of General Samuel Sloan, who soon built upon its front the fine residence now occupied by the president of the College. The west corner of that front was set off from the rest of the lot for some purpose or other a long time ago ; and about 1860 the Catholics bought it and erected upon it their present handsome church.

14. Josiah Horsford, the brother of the foregoing, was only a little younger than he, and the lives of the two in most respects ran parallel with each other. Josiah's wife was Jemima Smedley, sister of William's wife ; they too had nine children, each of whom, as a rule, was about two years younger than the corresponding child in the brother's family; Josiah bought early and kept long house lot No. 42, the lot next west of his brother's, and the nucleus of the present old house standing on its front was built by Josiah Horsford, - probably his "regulation house" erected in 1761; and the last visible tracks made by Josiah's family, while in general coeval with those of the other family, in one important respect, soon to be noted, were in contrast with them. Jemima Smedley Horsford joined the church in 1781, the same year as her sister and husband, but her own husband never became a member; she was regularly dismissed to unite with some other church (such was the custom), in all probability a church to the northwards. Josiah Horsford, unlike his brother, had two sons who remained and married here, - Josiah, Junior, whose wife was Sevelle, and who had four children between 1790-1801, and Roswell, who married Elizabeth Morse in February, 1792. The great service of Josiah Horsford was as proprietors' clerk, succeeding Hichard Stratton in 1765, and continuing until the proprietors' meetings were practically suspended in 1774, under the double pressure of the oncomings of the Eevolution, and the consequent growth of the town organization as such. The illspelled records in Horsford's own hand during that quarrelsome interval of nine years, show him to have been a man of character and influence and persistence. However, he did not hold on to his homestead, as did his brother William. Like him, Josiah had vigorously bought and sold lands in all parts of the town in speculative times; for example, he bought of Eev. Whitman Welch, for £25, in October, 1767, house lot 36, the original minister's lot, that cornered on the " Square," and that early came to be the site of the chief public house of the village and has continued so ever since ; and he sold the same year, in May, 100-acre lot No. 47, to ISTehemiah Williams, which holds the big rock on the northern slope of Northwest Hill.

But it may well have been that his pecuniary fortunes decayed in his old age; and it may possibly have been that he became addicted to strong drink. At any rate, the homestead was sold in the spring of 1796 to the Whitman brothers of Hartford^ who immediately opened a store for the sale of dry-goods and groceries in the east end of the house, afterwards building two stores in succession attached to the house at the east end, and at last the present store detached from the house and a little further to the east ; and in these stores a mercantile business was kept up, in the name and interest of the Whitman family, for over sixty years. For many years now lately past, Charles H. Mather has owned and occupied, as a merchant, the last-named of these stores. In a promiscuous lot of old papers and bills belonging to the Whitmans, that were not long ago discovered in the house last occupied by them, was found a bill to Josiah Horsford for liquors sold him " per son Ambrose " as late as 1803. Ambrose was Josiah Horsford's youngest son, born Dec. 31, 1781, and was consequently twenty-one years old when he procured the stimulants at Whitman's store as agent for his father. This is absolutely all we know of Ambrose Horsford ; and the last glimpse we get of the sturdy old pioneer, and proprietors' clerk, and Kevolu- tionary soldier, Josiah Horsford, the never-to-be-forgotten, is in playing the rather passive role of sending his grown-up son to the store for strong drink, and getting it charged. William and Josiah Horsford were steadily so prominent here, as much to overshadow their near relatives of the same name and from the same place (Oanaan, Connecticut), who played no insignificant part in West Hoosac and early Williamstown. John and Daniel Horsford bought of Ephraim Williams, Junior (the founder), house lot No. 10, for £30, April 14, 1753. The same parties sell the same house lot in September, 1765, to Daniel Horsford, Junior, for i^70, - an increase of value in twelve years of 133 per centum. John Horsford, Bloomer, bought of Seth Hudson, Gentleman, house lot No. 9, which was Hudson's original draft, and directly opposite Colonel Williams's original drafts, Nos. 8 and 10.

15. At this distance of time, and in the writer's real ignorance of the exact condition of things in 1768, it seems quite likely that the two junior members of the building and seating committee would not postpone provision for themselves and their families to a point later than that to which we have now come. We have already learned quite a good deal about Benjamin Simonds, and something about Mary Davis, of Northampton, his wife. They were married in Northampton by the famous Joseph Hawley, Justice of the Peace, April 23, 1752. They had, when the meeting-house was done, eight children, - 1753-1768. They lived, then, very near to the new place of worship, namely, on the south side of Main Street, in a house that they had built themselves on house lot No. 3, and in which they had kept a tavern, at least, since 1763, - the first tavern in the hamlet. They owned, in 1765, six other house lots close by, on both sides of Hemlock Brook, including No. 22, their original purchase, and on which they built their first house, whose precise site can be pointed out to this day, and some of the stones of whose cellar or underpinning are now scattered on the surface of the ground. Simonds was enterprising, and already experienced. He was now forty-two years old. He had the confidence of his fellow-settlers to a remarkable degree. Neither he nor his wife ever became members of the church ; but, in connection with the Searles, the Meachams, and the Strattons, they represented the indefinable East-of-the- Mountain sentiment, in contradistinction from the j^eculiar Connecticut sentiment, voiced (we may suppose) by the Welches, the Horsfords, and the Smedleys. We cannot infer what the differences between these were, but we perceive considerable signs of collision between them.

Simonds was laying the foundations in his increasing property, in his general enterprise and public spirit, in his broadening acquaintance as a tavern-keeper, and in his early experience and constant interest in militia affairs, for the astonishing influence, both military and civil, that he exerted in the two decades following. We shall recur to this in the next chapter; here we wish only to indicate a few facts of his personal and family history not heretofore touched upon. The following table is extracted mainly from the family Bible still preserved in the line of his descendants, the Blairs : -

This monument erected in memory of Col. Benjamin Simonds, one of the first settlers in Williamstown, and a firm supporter of his country's Independence. He was born Feb. 23, 1726, and died April 11, 1807.

The inscription on the tombstone of Colonel Simonds' s second wife, who was the widowed mother of Perly Putnam, one of the sons-in-law of Simonds, runs as follows : -

The formal contract of marriage between Colonel Simonds and Mrs. Putnam, drawn by Daniel Dewey, Esq., and entitled " Articles of Agreement," bears date Nov. 4, 1798. Tompson Joseph Skinner, Esq., is in this paper the party of the third part, widow Anna Putnam is the party of the second part, and Benjamin Simonds, Esq., is the party of the first part. She is to have ^GOO in six annual instalments, if she survive her husband ; she " shall have decent and convenient accommodations in his now dwelling house for and during the term of one year next after his decease " ; " his executors and administrators shall during that time support and maintain the said Anna in a decent and reputable manner suitable to her habits and circumstances of life ; and shall likewise as soon as convenient after the decease of the said Benjamin furnish the said Anna with a decent suit of mourning," etc. " As a jointure in lieu of dower," said Benjamin covenants to give "three acres of land to be taken off the east end of Oak Lot No. 53, and to be included between two parallels across the east end of said lot to the use of the said Benjamin and Anna for and during their joint lives, remainder over to the use of the said Anna to take effect immediately on the decease of the said Benjamin, for and during her natural life, to hei own proper use, behoof, and benefit, with full power and liberty for the said Anna to cut, fell down, carry away and dispose of any wood or timber growing on said land," etc. Anna Putnam had an estate of her own, and the " Agreement " covenants that she shall hold, enjoy, and bequeath the same as though she were feme sole during said intended intermarriage; and if she die intestate, her property to go to her children. T. J. Skinner was to be trustee of the said Anna, to manage her property, etc.

John Putnam, of Buckinghamshire, England, which was the county of John Hampden at the same time, emigrated to Massachusetts in 1G34, and settled in Danvers, where many of his descendants are still living. Asa Putnam, of Brattleboro, was of the fifth generation from John, through the latter's son Nathaniel, while General Israel Putnam stood in the line of Thomas, another of John's sons. Asa Putnam was the son of Josiah Putnam, of Western, now Warren, Massachusetts. Josiah was own cousin of General Israel Putnam. Josiah's son. Captain Josiah, who died in 1835, aged eightysix, owTi brother of Asa, sent two of his sons, W^illiam and James, from Western to Williams College, at the outset of the institution. William entered in 1793, when the College opened, but died three years later, and without graduating. James, wlio was younger, entered later, but was iK»t i/iaduated. It is iirobable tliat Riifns

Putnam (Williams College, 1804), was a brother of these two. At any rate, he was from Western, was a lawyer by profession, and died in Eutland, Vermont, in 1847, aged sixty-four. The way to Williamstown was thus paved for the Putnams. Asa Putnam, a farmer, born in Western in 1742, died in Brattleboro, in September, 1795, aged fifty-three. Mrs. Anna Putnam brought three of her nine children, the three youngest, into Colonel Simonds's family on her intermarriage with him ; while her eldest son, Perly Putnam, was already settled in Williamstown as the husband of Polly Simonds. These three children were Sewell, Sylvia, and Harvey. The last-named, youngest of all, was born in Brattleboro, Jan. 5, 1793. He was four years old when he came to Williamstown, and lived with his mother till her death in 1807. Shortly after this, he removed to Skaneateles, New York, where he was apprenticed to his elder brother Perly to learn the saddle and harness-making trade. Two years at this, and then he entered the law office there of Daniel Kellogg, also from Williamstown, and a son of that Samuel Kellogg who has already been characterized at length in these pages. Harvey Putnam studied his profession before he was admitted to practise it, as long as Jacob served for Rachel, and then he, too, like Jacob, married, not indeed his own cousin, but one of the own granddaughters of Colonel Simonds, Myra Osborne. This marriage took place at Skaneateles, Aug. 5, 1817. Western New York witnessed thereafter, in the person of Harvey Putnam, a distinguished lawyer, a reputable member of Congress repeatedly elected, and an excellent judge in different positions, till his death, in 1855. James 0. Putnam, of Buffalo, long in the public and diplomatic service of his state and country, is his son. Harvey Putnam was of medium size and a very light complexion ; he had a quick and elastic step, and a movement that gave one the impression that he was in a hurry ; he was for thirty years a member and officer of the Presbyterian church; and one of his daughters was married to John B. Skinner, 2d (Williams College, 1842), son of Samuel Skinner (Williams College, 1816), and grandson of Deacon Benjamin Skinner.

When Colonel Simonds made his last will and testament in 1803, and its two codicils also in the two successive years, these were all witnessed formally by Ephraim Seelye (his nearest neighbor across the road), and the two other Putnam children, Sewell and Sylvia. The last-named was a member of the family, seventeen years old, when her mother and the Colonel both died in April, 1807 ; and in her old age caused to be communicated to the writer her recollec- tion that the Colonel did not care to live after her mother died, and, in fact, dropped away eight days later. Mrs. Simonds was born in 1746, the year of Simonds's captivity in Canada, and was consequently twenty years younger than her second husband, yet he outlived her, and mourned her loss in his eighty-second year. Sylvia Putnam married Mr. Z. A. Hamilton, and lived about forty years in Aurora, New York, and died in October, 1883, aged ninety-four, with her daughter, ^Irs. Salmon Johnson, in Cattaraugus, New York. She was the mother of General Charles S. Hamilton, of "Wisconsin. The present writer had the pleasure of sending her, when she was about ninety years old, a photograph of Colonel Simonds, taken from an original portrait referred to in his will, and painted by W. Jennys in 1796. She recognized tlie picture instantly, and it moved her deeply; and as the Colonel's portrait, after many mutations, had then come to be the property of the sender and hung in his study, she proiX)sed to Mrs. Johnson to send to him an original portrait of her own mother, which, she said, had hung beside the Colonel's in her early home in Williamstown. Accordingly, after a separation of about seventy-five years, the two portraits were united again in Williamstown for a number of years. It later appeared, however, that Mrs. Hamilton had previously promised her mother's portrait to her great-granddaughter, Harriet O. Putnam, of Buffalo, in whose hands it is at the present time. Mrs. Hamilton communicated other pleasant recollections of Colonel Simonds in her girlhood: such as, for example, he always wore his military costume more or less complete till the last, as it appears in his portrait, - the cocked hat and powdered wig, the white neck-kerchief and frilled shirt-bosom, the regimental coat and buttons, and also the short clothes and knee-buckles; he always went to church in full costume ; and he occasionally offered family prayers, standing by the back of his chair. The late Dr. ^Morgan, of Bennington, told the writer that when he was a small boy riding past with his father, he had repeatedly seen the Colonel sitting in summer in his front doorway in his military toggery, being saluted by, and saluting in turn, the passers-by.

The Colonel's will lets a good deal of light into the condition of things in his family at the opening of the century. It was drawn by Judge Daniel Dewey, who was appointed one of the two executors, Jonathan Bridges, one of his sons-in-law, being the other. When the will came to probate in May, 1807, the latter in a good hand waived administration on the estate of Benjamin Simonds, and requested the judge that Daniel Dewey might be appointed sole executor of said will. The first clause directs his executors "particularly to pay to my beloved wife, Anna Simonds, six hundred dollars at the several times and in the manner specified in the contract made with her before our intermarriage/' - a copy of which contract was deposited with the will. Anna, his wife, was also " to have the use of the house in which I now live, and of the eight acres of land adjoining for one year,'' and then all real estate was to be sold to carry out the other provisions of the will. By the second codicil, added in March, 1805, - "I give and bequeath to m.y said wife, Anna Simonds, my chaise with the harness and horse which I use in the chaise, to keep and use during her natural life."

Colonel Simonds had had three sons in all, but Justin and Benjamin had both died before the will was made, leaving only Joseph, who was born in 1762, and was consequently forty-one years old in 1803. Mrs. Sylvia Hamilton had the impression, in her old age, that Joseph Simonds was a ne'er-do-well ; at any rate, she remembered very little about him, and certainly very few echoes of the man have reached down to the present time. The grandfather, Joseph Simonds, / made a very distinct impression upon his generation by uniting with the Scotch-Irish in the founding of Londonderry, New Hampshire, by helping to settle the so-called " English Kange " in that town, and becoming an early leader there, and also later by becoming one of the pioneers and leaders in the settlement of " Ware River " in / Massachusetts, whence his son Benjamin enlisted for Fort Massachusetts in 1745 ; but this Joseph, though named after his grandfather, and having before him as an example the great enterprise and success of his father, seems to have amounted to but little, and is thus mentioned in his father's will : " Unto my son, Joseph Simonds, I will and bequeath my clock and the case which contains it, my desk and book-case, and my firelock and side arms and my powder Flask and all the ammunition I have on hand, also all my wearing apparel of every description including buckles and buttons."

When this will was drawn, his eldest daughter, Rachel Train-Skinner, had recently died, and also his second daughter, Sarah (Mrs. Ithamar Clark), and her husband, too; and these facts help to explain the terms of the main clause of the will, which was to this effect ; namely, that the rest of his estate, real and personal, should be divided into equal parts, - one each to go to Benjamin Skinner (Rachel's second husband), Joseph Simonds, jCharles and Marcy Kellogg, Jonathan and Prudence Bridges, Joseph and Ablina Osborne, Thaddeus and Electa Edwards, Perly and Polly Putnam, and to the five sons of Sarah Clark, deceased, - eight equal parts in all, but Ben- jamin Skinner and Jonathan Bridges had already had $1000 each, and this sum was to be deducted from their shares respectively ; but *' all other sums of money and other things by me given to my said son or any of my daughters shall not be taken into consideration " in this division. By the first codicil to the will, the eight shares were to amount to $1000 each and no more, and the residue was to go to his son, Joseph Simonds ; and by the same, all claims of Rachel Skinner's children (said Rachel having received her portion) are cut off by one dollar to each. By the second codicil, Joseph Osborne having died since the execution of the will, his daughter Ablina was to have the whole share. *' I likewise give to my daughter, Polly Putnam, my Portrait." ^* And to my granddaughter, Sally Blair, the wife of William Blair, my large family Bible in two folio volumes after the expiration of one year from my deceas*'. until wliicli timp it is my desire that it remain with my said wife.

This Bible has already become an heirloom in the iiiair tamily lu "Williamsto^vn, being the property, at present, of Deacon Henry Blair, to be inherited by his eldest son, Austin Blair. The portrait passed over by gift, or otherwise, from the Putnams to the Osbornes and their heirs, and by these latter courteously and generously transmitted to the writer, whose family are in the direct line of Colonel Simonds through Jonathan and Prudence Bridges, to the eldest of whom, Grace Perry, the portrait is destined to fall. This can always be identified by many infallible marks and scars, but chiefly by the signature of the arti^^ 1)iins»'1f udoii tli.* l>;ir-k of the o.niv.is:. '' W Jennys pinx' 1796."

Among *' the five sons of Sarah Clark deccastd," entitled to one share out of the eight, into which their grandfather's general estate was to be divided for distribution, was one, Dr. Billy J. Clark, who became distinguished, and will always be remembered for signal services rendered to the cause of temperance in this country. Some account of his early life, and of the circumstances under which he conceived an invincible repugnance to the drinking of intoxicants, has been put down on the pages of an earlier chapter of this book. From a country tavern, kept by his father, near Centre Pownal, where this repugnance was engendered, he passed to the study of medicine, married Joanna Paine, settled down for a forty years of most successful practice in Moreau, New York, but closed his career in the neighboring town of Glens Falls as an apothecary, and as a temperance leader and organizer. Appleton's Cyclopaedia has this to say of this son of " Sarah Clark deceased " : " The earliest organization to stem the tide of intemperance in this Republic would seem to have been that of 'The Temperate Society of Moreau and Northumberland,' which was instigated by Dr. B. J. Clark, of Moreau, in March, 1808, and constituted by the signature of forty-three members, mainly substantial farmers of the two towns named. Their constitution stipulated, that ' no member shall drink rum, gin, whiskey, wine, or any distilled spirits, or composition of the same, or any of them, except by the advice of a physician, or in case of actual disease (also excepting wine at public dinners), under penalty of twenty-five cents. Provided that this article shall not infringe on any religious ordinance.' And further, that ' no member shall be intoxicated under penalty of fifty cents.' And again : ' no member shall offer any of said liquors to any other member, or urge any other person to drink thereof, under penalty of twenty-five cents for each offence.' Through Dr. Clark's energy and perseverance, a special act of the New York Legislature was obtained, incorporating the Saratoga County Medical Society, the first organization of the kind in the state. He was also a member of the New York Electoral College in 1848. He was born in Northampton in January, 1778. A few years later his parents removed to Williamstown (his mother's birthplace and grandparents' residence), where he attended the free school founded under Colonel Williams's will. At the age of seventeen he commenced his medical studies with Dr. Gibbs in Pownal, and continued them with Dr. Wicker in Easton, New York, and commenced his practice, in Moreau, in 1799. His wife died in January, 1839, and not long after he moved to Glens Falls, where he died, greatly honored, in September, 1866, in his eighty -ninth year. His son Walter was a member of Williams College in 1831, but was not graduated. His four brothers, referred to with himself in Colonel Simonds's will, were Ira, Isaac, Chester, and Sereno.

If Billy J. Clark proved himself to be the most distinguished scion of the Sarah Simonds branch of the large paternal tree, what shall be said of John B. Skinner as illustrating and making famous the elder and double Rachel Simonds branch of the same tree? We have already spoken of the Blairs as springing from Sally Train, the only child of Kachel Simonds by her first husbiuid, to whom the Colonel expressly willed his " large family Bible in two folio volumes " ; we liave also noted the disparaging mode of reference in the ColonePs will to the children of Rachel Skinner, of whom there were five in all, the two eldest sons in which group, Harry and William, having alreiidy given marked signs of intemperance and inefficiency; but there were two younger boys, Samuel and John Burr, respectively nine and five years old when the will was drawn, who showed themselves in after life to be men of very different character. Samuel Skinner, born in 1794 (Williams College, 1816), studied law with his sister's husband, Samuel A. Talcott, of whom we shall learn more by-and-bye, till 1819, when he settled down in his profession at Leroy, New York, where he died in 1852. Durfee's "Annals of Williams " has this to say of him : " Mr. Skinner was a well-read, safe, and careful lawyer, devoted to the interests of his clients, distinguished for fairness in practice, and diligence and uprightness in business. He acquired a handsome fortune, and left an unsullied name. He was for many years a ruling elder in the Presbyterian church at Leroy, an active, liberal, and devoted Christian, possessing uncommon gifts for the duties of the office. He exerted a wide influence in the community, which is still felt, and where his memory is cherished with the deepest tenderness."

While the alcove picture is not in terms overdrawn, John r)urr Skinner, l)orn in 1799, the youngest child of Deacon Benjamin and Rachel Train-Skinner, became a much more famous and deeply influential man and lawyer than his brother. In partial explanation of his remarkable career, it should here be premised that Deacon Skinner was a Jeffersonian Democrat and a devoted Freemason ; he was a man of fine appearance, with a clear and penetrating voice, of warm feelings readily expressing themselves in manly tears, and a natural leader in all church matters and a frequent and acceptable lay reader in public church worship. In an atmosphere diffused by such a positive man as this, John Burr Skinner grew up, to say nothing of the natural influence of his uncle, General T. J. Skinner, who was a consummate speaker and adroit politician, and the political leader of his party for many years in Berkshire County. After his graduation at Willi '"<< i" 1818, youn<r Skiiin»'r iiMturiinv drifted into democratic circles ; he entered the law office of Hon. Daniel Buel, of Troy, New York, where he formed a life-long friendship with his fellow-student, the late William L. Marcy, governor of New York and secretary of state under President Pierce. He completed his preparatory studies at the then celebrated law school of Judges Gould and Reeves, at Litchfield, Connecticut ; and soon after established himself as a lawyer in the hamlet of Wyoming, New York, in the present county of Wyoming, both of which names were given by himself to their respective localities-. His cousin, James 0. Putnam, said of him : -

His success, solid and brilUant, was assured from the first. His industry, his fidelity to professional trusts, his learning and his marvellous power before juries, gave a leadership at the circuits which he never lost. The jury trial was the favorite theatre of his professional contests, and it was as the advocate that he was without a peer. The methods of conducting litigation in his time differed from the present. Then the great object was to secure a verdict from the twelve men. On their decision hung the issues of life and death and fortune. This made the counsel who could carry the jury, whether by magic or storm, an indispensable ally. Appeals were comparatively few. Now-a-days when the jury in so many trials is but an incident, and law, as has been said with much humor and some wisdom, is the power of decision of the last judge that can hear the case, the eloquent advocate holds a position less relatively important in the trial of causes. But Judge Skinner was learned as a lawyer, as well as eloquent as an advocate, and it was this rare combination that gave him a position so distinguished before the courts.

Ex-President Fillmore, Avho presided at a meeting of the Bar of Erie County, convened to give some expression of its sentiment on the occasion of his death, in 1871, said : -

My acquaintance with Mr. Skinner commenced in 1829, when he and I were both members of the Assembly. That was my first year, but I think it was his third year, and he had then an enviable reputation for so young a man in that distinguished body, as yet free from the suspicion of bribery, and adorned by the talents of such men as John C. Spencer, Erastus Koot, Benj. F. Butler, Frank Granger, and of others. The revision of our statutes, the great work which did so much to methodize and relieve them from the cumbrous language and accumulated contradictions and inconsistencies of years, was then just completed, and in that great work Judge Skinner bore a conspicuous part. I know he was listened to with confidence and respect, and no member of the House seemed to exert a more salutary influence. My subsequent acquaintance with him was mainly at the Bar. Here he was distinguished for his legal arguments and forensic eloquence. I have often felt a tremor of anxiety when I have had to meet him. He was a man religiously devoted to the interest of his client, without ever compromising his own conscience or dignity. He prepared his case with great labor and assiduity, and whatever could be said in favor of his client's interest he presented with great clearness and force, and when that was done he conceived that he had dischai^ed his professional duty, and he patiently waited the result. The highest encomium that can ever be passed upon a man of his profession may with great propriety be passed upon him, and that is, he was a learned, conscientious lawyer.

The late John B. Skinner, as a lawyer and advocate, had few equals, and no superior, for many years, in western New York. To uniform courtesy, untiring industry, uuflincliing and incorruptible fidelity to his clients, you must add great tact and knowledge of human nature, as well as great legal learning, and oftentimes the highest order of eloquence, to make a just estimate of his character. It was before a jury that he was, in some resi^ects, unequalled. His efforts there were entirely extemporaneous. Those who have had great opportunity to hear the most eloquent of American orators, say there were occasions when those extemporaneous efforts of Mr. Skinner, in true eloquence and power, surpassed all his contemporaries. When fully roused, his language wa» pure English, - chaste, elegant, and concise. He spoke without apparent effort, with a directness, earnestness, and naturalness that seemed almost inspired. His mind, like his person, was high-wrought and of the finest mould. All his appeals and all his conversations were addressed to the better part of our nature. With truth it may be said, no one ever heard him at the Bar, or held private conversation with him, who did not feel his nobler sentiments strengthened and elevated by his influence.

Judge Martin Grover, of the Court of Appeals of the state of New York, who knew him very thoroughly on the circuit, and otherwise, from 1836 onwards for twenty years, embodied his recollections, in 1873, in a paper prepared for the Buffalo Historical Society. We quote : -

Mr. Skinner attended all the circuits in Livingston, Allegheny, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, and Genesee counties, and his presence was regarded almost as essential as that of the Judge. There were then no railroads in any part of the district, and Mr. Skinner travelled from one country town to another, in company with the Judge, each with his own horse and sulky. Extensive study and large experience had made Mr. Skinner perfectly familiar with, and master of, nearly every legal question presented, and he was, therefore, able to take a leading part in nearly every case tried. His clear intellect and capacity for (luick comprehension enabled him to try a cause with great ability, without any previous preparation, and with but little consultation with his client and the other counsel. He would grasp the entire case at once and adopt the correct mode of conducting the trial. He was very sagacious in the examination of witnesses. An adverse witness rarely succeeded in baffling him, and, as a general rule, he would derive an advantage for his client from