BOYHOOD AND YOUTH IN NEW YORK STATE 19 



allusions after the fashion of the period. Pope 

 and Dryden appear to have been his literary 

 models ; and that he was full of sentiment is indi- 

 cated by the great variety of elegiac and love 

 poetry as well as of satire, left to us. He evidently 

 delighted in puzzles, enigmas and difficult arith- 

 metical problems. 



I know very little about my grandparents on my 

 father's side because they did not emigrate to New 

 York but lived and died in the neighborhood of 

 Hunterdon County, New Jersey. My father, 

 Aaron Phillips Roberts, was born there, October 

 2 4> X 795 near Harbortown, which is not far from 

 Washington's Crossing on the Delaware River. 

 When he was about twenty-one years of age he 

 walked from Harbortown to East Varick a 

 distance of three hundred miles with his gun on 

 his shoulder. When he married my mother, Eliza- 

 beth Burroughs, in 1820, the young couple went to 

 live in a log cabin on a small farm of about thirty- 

 five acres, upon which tract the village of East 

 Varick now stands. After Grandfather Bur- 

 roughs' death they moved back to the old home- 

 stead farm and worked the two farms together 

 until their eldest daughter, Caroline, married 

 Charles Christopher, when the East Varick tract 

 was given to her. 



