hy, and personal narrative of
all kinds, seem to command a general popularity. Moreover, we like to
know from the person himself what he does, how he thinks and feels, what
fortunes or vicissitudes he encounters, how he begins his career, and
how it ends. All biography gives us most of these particulars, but they
are never so vividly recited as by the subject of the narrative himself.
Accordingly what was once a kind of diary of the most unimportant events
I have transformed into a personal history. I know the transformation
will not give them any importance they did not originally possess, but
it gives me at least one chance of making my recital interesting.

All who have any knowledge of the city of Philadelphia will remember
that on its southern boundary there is a large district known as the
township of Moyamensing. Much of it is now incorporated with the
recently enlarged city, but the old name still clings to it. There are
many thousand acres in this district, which stretches from the Delaware
to the Schuylkill. The junction of the two rivers at its lower end makes
it a peninsula, which has long been known as "The Neck." When the city
was founded by William Penn, much of this and the adjoining land was in
possession of the Swedes, who came first to Pennsylvania. They had
settled on tracts of different sizes, some very large, and some very
small, according to their ability to purchase. It was then covered by a
dense forest, which required great labor to clear it.

My ancestors were among these early Swedes. They were so poor in this
world's goods as to be able to purchase only forty acres of this
extremely cheap land. Even that was not paid for in money, but in labor.
In time they cleared it up, built a small brick house after the quaint
fashion of those early days, the material for which was furnished from a
superior kind of clay underlying the land all around them, and
thenceforward maintained themselves from the products of the soil, then,
as now, proverbial for its fruitfulness. It descended to their children,
most of whom were equally plodding and unambitious with themselves. All
continued the old occupation of looking to the soil for subsistence; and
so long as the forty acres were kept together, they lived well. But as
descendants multiplied, and one generation succeeded to another, so the
little farm became subdivided among numerous heirs, all of whom sold to
strangers, except my father, who considered hims