326 MEMOIR OF DAXIEL TEEADWELL. 



He began his grammar school studies in the free Grammar School in Ipswich ; 

 but the state of things there was found so unsatisfactory, that he with other bo^s 

 was sent to the district school of the town. After his father's death, in 1803, he 

 went to Newburj'port, ten miles distant, and there continued his studies ; first 

 under the care of Dr. Samuel Dana, and then successively under that of Mr. 

 Thomas Burnham and Amos Choate, Esq., all graduates of Harvard College. In 

 this manner, his teaching appearing not to liave been of a very high order, he 

 received all his regular school instruction. His Sundays he spent in the famih' of 

 his guardian, walking from Newburyport to Ipswich on Saturday afternoon, the 

 usual half-holiday of the New England scliools. From his schoolfellows at this 

 time we learn that he was a pleasant, though rather sedate boy, and a favorite 

 among his mates ; that he was remarkably upright, had the confidence of his com- 

 panions, was agent and treasurer in the many little pecuniar}' transactions common 

 to schools, because of the exactness of his accounts and his scrupulous fidelity, — 

 traits of character which marked his whole life. That he held a distinguished 

 position among his fellows may be inferred from the epithet of " Captain," by which 

 he was flimiliarly known to them. 



The powers of imagination and composition in fruitful inventors are often 

 early displayed. A friend in Gla.sgow, where James Watt Avas visiting when 

 not fourteen years old, wrote to his mother : '•' You must take your son James 

 home ; I cannot stand the state of excitement he keeps me in ; I am worn out with 

 want of sleep. Every evening before ten o'clock, our usual hour of retiring to i-est, 

 he continues to engage me in conversation ; then begins some striking tale, and, 

 whether humorous or pathetic, the interest is so overpowering that all the family 

 listen to him with breathless attention, while hour after hour strikes unheeded." 

 So of young Treadwell it is related that for two or three years it was his custom 

 to collect the boys in the warm evenings in a circle upon the grass, and delight 



towards me liis kiud offices anil this without consanguinity but from the benevolence of his nature) I give my 

 gold sleeve-buttons which were my father's." 



In a communication to the Boston Courier he thus writes of his guardian : " Colonel Xathaniel Wade was 

 an offii^r in the army during most of the Eevolutionary "War. Being with the garrison at AVest Point under 

 Arnold, the command of that fort by order of General Washington devolved upon him immediately after Arnold's 

 defection. This command was held but a few days, as, upon the arrival of more troops, it was necessarily 

 given to a general officer. Colonel Wade remained in the anny until near the close of the war, when he returned 

 to Ipswich, his native town. Upon the breakiug out of the insurrection under Shays he again went into the 

 service in command of the Essex regiment, one of the four regiments sent under General Lincoln for the 

 winter campaign against the rebels in 1786-87. Tliis was his last service in the field. During the remainder 

 of his life he lived at Ipswich, honored and beloved throughout the county for his sound judgment, his perfect 

 integrity, and his unfailing benevolence. He died in 1826, at the ripe age of seventy-seven years." His tombstone 

 in the Ipswich graveyard bears an epitaph probably writteu by Jlr. Treadwell. 



