BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR, 



BY A FRIEND. 



In the beginning of the y^ar 1795, Bilious Avery re- 

 moved from Wallingford, Ct. (being then twenty-two 

 years of age), to the town of Salisbury, in the county of 

 Herkimer, N. Y. After clearing a small piece of ground 

 and building a log house, he returned, in the fall of the 

 same year, to his native state and birth place. In June 

 of the next year (1796) he married Esther Hall Street, 

 and returned to his new home, then almost surrounded 

 by a dense forest for many miles around. But very few 

 had settled in this part of the county before them.* Thus 

 they became early inured to the hardships of settling a 

 new country, and helped change the wilderness into 

 those cultivated and fruitful fields which we now enjoy. 



As a natural result, from this union there grew up 

 nine sons and two daughters. Although the advantages 



* More than half a century has passed since the town was first 

 settled. It now contains nearly three thousand souls; and still there 

 remain over forty thousand acres of unbroken wilderness within its 

 borders. It has probably furnished as many well-to-do farmers as 

 any other town in the county. 



