The Days of a Man 1809 



air of a New World. Among them occur the names 

 of Waldo, Adams, Gary, Hull, Bacon, Holly, Fowler, 

 Foster, Graves, Dimmock, Wight, Lake, and Drake, 1 

 the line last named harking back in Devon to Drakes, 

 Grenvilles, Courteneys, Prideaux, Gilberts, and De 

 Quincys. 



John John Jordan, my great-grandfather, served in the 

 Jordan Revolution; in after years he was justice of the 

 peace at Moriah on the hills above Port Henry on 

 Lake Champlain in Essex County, New York. Be- 

 hind him and his father, Elijah Jordan, a Baptist 

 clergyman of Litchfield, Connecticut, stood Rufus 

 Jordan, supposed to be a certain Rufus known to 

 have left Jordan in Devon to seek his fortune in 

 America. John Jordan's old farm was a barren and 

 stony tract strewn with crystals of red hematite, 

 the common iron ore, which my father used for shot 

 in squirrel hunting. Half a century later, and long 

 after my grandfather, another Rufus Jordan, had 

 sold this property, it acquired large value as one of 

 New York's great sources of iron, and on it now 

 stands the considerable town of Mineville. 

 Rufus Rufus Jordan I remember as a dark and wiry little 

 Jordan man w ith large black eyes, and an intense dislike for 

 the political group which he called "the Feds." His 

 death occurred in 1862, when he was seventy-nine 

 years old. Of my paternal grandmother, Rebecca 

 Bacon, I recall only that she was a slender, keen- 

 eyed, quick-spoken old lady who sat by the winter fire. 

 My father, Hiram Jordan, was born on February 

 12, 1809, which date, it will be remembered, was 

 also the birthday of Darwin and of Lincoln. A little 



1 See Appendix A (page 665). 

 C 2 3 



