Read an Excerpt
cucumber timber about six by eight inches, hollowed out on the inside and moulded on the outside, and these, when spiked under the eaves, not only served to convey water but formed a very respectable cornice as well. They did efficient service for more than thirty years. At the time I was born there was also a barn, a long cow stable, a wagon-house, a wood-house, a stone ash-house, a smoke-house and an out-door brick oven. The Family Such knowledge as I have of my forebears on both sides indicates that they were farmers, almost without exception and chiefly of Welsh and English extraction. Some of them fought in the Revolution but, so far as I know, without particular distinction. My maternal grandfather, Joseph Burroughs, was born in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, probably about 1769. He appears to have begun life as a school teacher, for a certificate of his superior qualifications exists in the Roberts family Bible, owned by Ralph P. Roberts of East Var- ick, New York. The certificate is signed by twelve Dutch school trustees. It is known that the Burroughs family emigrated from New Jersey to Central New York in 1812 and settled in SenecaCounty, on the west bank of Cayuga Lake, at die place now called East Varick. As I have already mentioned, Grandfather Burroughs was a voluminous writer, for each of my children now possesses a number of his manuscripts which were recovered some forty years after his death. The handwriting is good, the grammar nearly faultless and the subjects cover a wide range. He must certainly have had an active mind and literary tastes to find time to write so profusely while he was farming and letting sunlight into beech and maple forests which were then sodense that they would yield from twenty to twenty-five cords of four-foot wood per acre. ...