an outpost in
the wilderness, and, the country having barely recovered from the
war of 1812-15 between the United States and England, enterprise
and exploration had just begun to push through the thin lines of
settlements along the valleys of the Mohawk and upper Hudson, westward
by Buffalo and the great lakes to Ohio (then the Far West), and
northward to the valley of the St. Lawrence. Schenectady was the
distributing point of this wagon-borne commerce and movement until
the completion of the Erie Canal, which, down to my own period of
recollection, was the quickest channel of communication westward, with
its horse "packets," traveling at the creditable speed of four miles
an hour, the traffic barges making scarcely more than two.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Ward died just before the signing of the Declaration,
so that his name does not figure in the list of signers.]

Hardly established in what was intended for a temporary visit, the
residence of the family became fixed at Schenectady, owing to the
partner of my father, left to manage the business at Westerly,
becoming involved in personal embarrassments which brought on the
bankruptcy of the firm and the seizure of all my father's little
property, and, what was worse, the certainty of imprisonment for debt
in the case of his returning home. Owing to the judgments hanging
over him, which a succession of misfortunes prevented him from ever
satisfying, it was late in my own remembrance, I think about 1848 or
1850, before he was enabled to visit his early home. Hard times came
on the whole people of that section, and the practical destruction of
his business by the loss of all his capital drove him into seeking any
employment which would give a momentary relief.

Of this period of their existence my mother rarely spoke, and it must
have been one of severe privations. She has told me that she often
went to bed hungry, that the children might have enough to eat.
She had no assistance in her household duties, except that of her
daughter, a girl of tender years, and, having her husband's five
journeymen as members of the household, with five children, of whom my
sister was the second, she not only did the daily household duties,
including washing and baking, but spun and wove the cloth for the
clothes of her husband and children, cut and made them up. Her
cheerful faith in an overruling Providence must have been, in those
days, a supreme consolation, for, even in recalling them in