My father never went to sea after he inherited Clawbonny. From that
time down to the day of his death, he remained on his farm, with the
exception of a single winter passed in Albany as one of the
representatives of the county. In his day, it was a credit to a man
to represent a county, and to hold office under the State; though the
abuse of the elective principle, not to say of the appointing power,
has since brought about so great a change. Then, a member of congress
was _somebody_; now, he is only--a member of congress.
We were but two surviving children, three of the family dying infants,
leaving only my sister Grace and myself to console our mother in her
widowhood. The dire accident which placed her in this, the saddest of
all conditions for a woman who had been a happy wife, occurred in the
year 1794, when I was in my thirteenth year, and Grace was turned of
eleven. It may be well to relate the particulars.
There was a mill, just where the stream that runs through our valley
tumbles down to a level below that on which the farm lies, and empties
itself into a small tributary of the Hudson. This mill was on our
property, and was a source of great convenience and of some profit to
my father. There he ground all the grain that was consumed for
domestic purposes, for several miles around; and the tolls enabled him
to fatten his porkers and beeves, in a way to give both a sort of
established character.
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