AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF 

 ANDREW DICKSON WHITE 



CHAPTER I 



BOYHOOD IN CENTRAL NEW YORK 1832-1850 



T the close of the Revolution which separated the 

 colonies from the mother country, the legislature of 

 New York set apart nearly two million acres of land, in the 

 heart of the State, as bounty to be divided among her sol- 

 diers who had taken part in the war; and this "Military 

 Tract," having been duly divided into townships, an ill- 

 inspired official, in lack of names for so many divisions, 

 sprinkled over the whole region the contents of his class- 

 ical dictionary. Thus it was that there fell to a beautiful 

 valley upon the headwaters of the Susquehanna the 

 name of "Homer." Fortunately the surveyor-general 

 left to the mountains, lakes, and rivers the names the 

 Indians had given them, and so there was still some poet- 

 ical element remaining in the midst of that unfortunate 

 nomenclature. The counties, too, as a rule, took Indian 

 names, so that the town of Homer, with its neighbors, 

 Tully, Pompey, Fabius, Lysander, and the rest, were em- 

 bedded in the county of Onondaga, in the neighborhood 

 of lakes Otisco and Skaneateles, and of the rivers Tiough- 

 nioga and Susquehanna. 



Hither came, toward the close of the eighteenth century, 

 a body of sturdy New Englanders, and, among them, my 

 grandfathers and grandmothers. Those on my father's 

 side: Asa White and Clara Keep, from Munson, Massa- 



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