1 8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



County, on the west bank of Cayuga Lake, at die 

 place now called East Varick. 



As I have already mentioned, Grandfather Bur- 

 roughs was a voluminous writer, for each of my 

 children now possesses a number of his manu- 

 scripts which were recovered some forty years after 

 his death. The handwriting is good, the grammar 

 nearly faultless and the subjects cover a wide 

 range. He must certainly have had an active 

 mind and literary tastes to find time to write so 

 profusely while he was farming and letting sun- 

 light into beech and maple forests which were then 

 so dense that they would yield from twenty to 

 twenty-five cords of four-foot wood per acre. 



It appears from the internal evidence of these 

 papers that Joseph Burroughs was a farmer, a 

 local poet and speaker, accustomed to commemo- 

 rate the notable events of the neighborhood and to 

 have these productions published in the Ovid Ga- 

 zette. He was a tax assessor and a school trustee ; 

 a member of the Methodist Church though rather 

 too liberal in his opinions to please the minister; 

 a man widely interested in national affairs, as 

 shown by the varied subjects of his writings; vio- 

 lently opposed to the Free Masons; and if not 

 well educated, at least well read in classical Eng- 

 lish literature, for his verse abounds in classical 



