When I say that Governor George Clinton used to stop occasionally, and taste my father's Madeira, I do not wish to boast of being classed with those who then composed the gentry of the state. To this, in that day, we could hardly aspire, though the substantial hereditary property of my family gave us a local consideration that placed us a good deal above the station of ordinary yeomen. Had we lived in one of the large towns, our association would unquestionably have been with those who are usually considered to be one or two degrees beneath the highest class. These distinctions were much more marked, immediately after the war of the revolution, than they are to-day; and they are more marked to-day, even, than all but the most lucky, or the most meritorious, whichever fortune dignifies, are willing to allow.

The courtship between my parents occurred while my father was at home, to be cured of the wounds he had received in the engagement between the Trumbull and the Watt. I have always supposed this was the moving cause why my mother fancied that the grim-looking scar on the left side of my father's face was so particularly becoming. The battle was fought in June 1780, and my parents were married in the autumn of the same year. My father did not go to sea again until after my birth, which took place the very day that Cornwallis capitulated at Yorktown. These combined events set the young sailor in motion, for he felt he had a family to provide for, and he wished to make one more mark on the enemy in return for the beauty-spot his wife so gloried in. He accordingly got a commission in a privateer, made two or three fortunate cruises, and was able at the peace to purchase a prize-brig, which he sailed, as master and owner, until the year 1790, when he was recalled to the paternal roof by the death of my grandfather. Being an only son, the captain, as my father was uniformly called, inherited the land, stock, utensils and crops, as already mentioned; while the six thousand pounds currency that were "at use," went to my two aunts, who were thought to be well married, to men in their own class of life, in adjacent counties.

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. In a word, the mill was the concentrating point for all the products of the farm, there being a little landing on the margin of the creek that put up from the Hudson, whence a sloop sailed weekly for town. My father passed half his time about the mill and landing, superintending his workmen, and particularly giving directions about the fitting of the sloop, which was his property also, and about the gear of the mill. He was clever, certainly, and had made several useful suggestions to the millwright who occasionally came to examine and repair the works; but he was by no means so accurate a mechanic as he fancied himself to be. He had invented some new mode of arresting the movement, and of setting the machinery in motion when necessary; what it was, I never knew, for it was not named at Clawbonny after the fatal accident occurred. One day, however, in order to convince the millwright of the excellence of this improvement, my father caused the machinery to be stopped, and then placed his own weight upon the large wheel, in order to manifest the sense he felt in the security of his invention. He was in the very act of laughing exultingly at the manner in which the millwright shook his head at the risk he ran, when the arresting power lost its control of the machinery, the heavy head of water burst into the buckets, and the wheel whirled round carrying my unfortunate father with it. I was an eye-witness of the whole, and saw the face of my parent, as the wheel turned it from me, still expanded in mirth. There was but one revolution made, when the wright succeeded in stopping the works. This brought the great wheel back nearly to its original position, and I fairly shouted with hysterical delight when I saw my father standing in his tracks, as it might be, seemingly unhurt. Unhurt he would have been, though he must have passed a fearful keel-hauling, but for one circumstance. He had held on to the wheel with the tenacity of a seaman, since letting go his hold would have thrown him down a cliff of near a hundred feet in depth, and he actually passed between the wheel and the planking beneath it unharmed, although there was only an inch or two to spare; but in rising from this fearful strait, his head had been driven between a projecting beam and one of the buckets, in a way to crush one temple in upon the brain. So swift and sudden had been the whole thing, that, on turning the wheel, his lifeless body was still inclining on its periphery, retained erect, I believe, in consequence of some part of his coat getting attached, to the head of a nail. This was the first serious sorrow of my life.