HIS MATERNAL ANCESTORS 17 



and had by her a son Richard, my grandfather, who being of a 

 scholarly turn was sent to William and Mary College. When 

 summoned thence to take his share in the management of his 

 father's business, the young man rebelled and announced his 

 intention of studying law. This was displeasing to the mer- 

 chant father, who set great store by his ships and his shops, of 

 which the principal was in Richmond, where the old Spottis- 

 wood Hotel stood. The young man and the old were alike 

 obdurate ; so they parted. The time was about 1790 ; the tide 

 of life was flooding to the West, and it bore my grandfather 

 with it. He had read law with the help of W [name illegible] 

 and other able jurists, though he was but a youth when he came 

 to Kentucky and after a time settled down in Campbell County, 

 which then included what is now a number of counties in 

 northern Kentucky. He was too late for the last chance of 

 acquiring land of the best quality by the simple process 

 that came to those who entered the country in the first 

 twenty-five years of the colonization ; so he had to set about 

 his winning in the less desirable but still excellent fields near 

 the Ohio, rather than in the marvellously fertile region about 

 Lexington. 



Though a late-comer, my grandfather was laborious and 

 thrifty. He practised law with great success, took land for his 

 fees, bought discerningly, and in sixty years amassed what was 

 for the time and place a great fortune. Though he had given 

 largely to his many children, and supported a host of imprudent 

 kindred, his estate was valued at his death, in 1868, at a million 

 and a half dollars, there being at that time probably not half a 

 dozen such successes in the Ohio valley. All this gain was made 

 not only honestly, but in a generous way. He was a good land- 

 lord ; he deterred no man who tried to do his part, and even of 

 ne'er-do-wells who swarmed about him all his days, he was 

 wont to say that "the good will of a cur is better than his ill 

 will." The worst comment he ever was known to make of any 

 man was that he was "a pestiferous fellow." 



