14 THE JUKES. 



to survive in conformity to the persistence of the domiciliary envi- 

 ronment. I have seen rude shelters made of boughs covered with 

 sod, or the refuse slabs of saw mills set slanting against ledges of 

 rock and used in the summer as abodes, the occupants bivouacing 

 much as gypsies. Others of the habitations have two rooms, but 

 so firmly has habit established modes of living, that, nevertheless, 

 they often use but one congregate dormitory. Sometimes I found 

 an overcrowding so close it suggested that these dwellings were the 

 country equivalents of city tenement houses. Domesticity is im- 

 possible. The older girls, finding no privacy within a home over- 

 run with younger brothers and sisters, purchase privacy at the risk 

 of prudence, and the night rambles through woods and tangles end, 

 too often, in illegitimate offspring. During the last thirty years, 

 however, the establishment of factories has brought about the build- 

 ing of houses better suited to secure domesticity, and with this 

 change alone, an accompanying change in personal habits is being 

 introduced, which would otherwise be impossible. 



The origin of the Stock of the " Jukes," Between the years 1720 

 and 1740 was born a man who shall herein be called Max. He was 

 a descendant of the early Dutch settlers, and lived much as the back- 

 woodsmen upon our frontiers now do. He is described as " a hun- 

 ter and fisher, a hard drinker, jolly and companionable, averse to 

 steady toil," working hard by spurts and idling by turns, becoming 

 blind in his old age, and entailing his blindness upon his children 

 and grandchildren. He had a numerous progeny, some of them 

 almost certainly illegitimate. Two of his sons married two out of 

 six sisters (called " Jukes " in these pages) who were born between 

 the year 1740 and 1770, but whose parentage has not been absolute- 

 ly ascertained. The probability is they were not full sisters, that 

 some, if not all of them, were illegitimate. The family name, in two 

 cases, is obscure, which accords with the supposition that at least 

 two of the women were half-sisters to the other four, the legitimate 

 daughters bearing the family name, the illegitimate keeping either 

 the mother's name or adopting that of the reputed father. Five of 

 these women in the first generation were married ; the sixth one it 

 has been impossible to trace, for she moved out of the county. Of 



