48 AUTOBIOGRAPHY 



people so sturdy, productive and self-reliant, as 

 the inhabitants of the Lake Country in New York, 

 in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. 

 My uncle, Thomas Burroughs, my father Aaron 

 P. Roberts, and our nearest neighbor, Michael 

 Ritter, owned adjoining farms together compris- 

 ing between four and five hundred acres. There 

 were born to these three heads of families thirty- 

 two children, only one of whom died before reach- 

 ing the age of thirty, and that one lost his life in 

 the battle of Bull Run. These children were all 

 strong and capable; some of them rose to places 

 of modest distinction, all of them were law-abiding 

 and temperate in habits of living and thought, and 

 most of them received all or nearly all of their 

 school education in the schools of the district and 

 in the nearby-academies. Besides those mentioned, 

 twelve other families resided in our school district 

 but I would not have it inferred that each of these 

 furnished an equal quota to the school, for if so, 

 there would have been at least eighty pupils while 

 there were, in fact, only sixty on the rolls even in 

 winter. 



During the last fifteen years the occupiers of 

 these three homesteads just mentioned have fur- 

 nished only two pupils for this school a part of 



