rned home after the trial, completely
exhausted, and on the Fourth of July, 1847, found myself in a raging
fever, which continued more than two months before I was able to
rise from the bed, and then I was as helpless as a child. I was
unable to walk, and was lifted from the house into the carriage to
get the fresh air, and continued under disability until October,
when I was again able to renew my business.

During my practice thus far, I had been able to accumulate in
property and money more than ten thousand dollars. I had, in
addition to my practice, engaged in a profitable business with
Jacob Emminger, a practical mechanic, in the manufacture of doors,
blinds and other building materials. We acquired valuable pine-
lands in Michigan and transported the lumber to our works at
Mansfield. We continued this business until I was appointed
Secretary of the Treasury, in March, 1877, when I sold out my
interest and also abandoned the practice of the law.

I spent the winter of 1847-8 at Columbus, where I made many
acquaintances who were of great service to me in after life, and
had a happy time also with the young ladies I met there. Columbus
was then the headquarters of social life for Ohio. It had a
population of about fifteen thousand, with few or no manufactures.
It has now a population of more than one hundred thousand, the
increase being largely caused by the great development of the
numerous railroads centering there, and of the coal and iron mines
of the Hocking Valley. It was also the natural headquarters of
the legal profession, the Supreme Court of Ohio, then under the
old constitution, and the District Court of the United States
holding their sessions there.

On the first day of August, 1848, my grandmother, Elizabeth Stoddard
Sherman, died at Mansfield at the residence of her daughter, Mrs.
Parker. Her history and characteristics have already been referred
to. She was to our family the connecting link between the
Revolutionary period and our times. She had a vivid recollection
of the burning of the principal towns of Connecticut by the British
and Tories, of the trials and poverty that followed the War of the
Revolution, of the early political contests between the Federalists
and Republicans, of the events of the War of 1812, and of her
journey to Ohio in 1816. She maintained a masterly care of her
children and grandchildren. She was the best type I have known of
the strong-willed, religious P