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MEMOIR OF DANIEL TREADWELL. 



He began his grammar school studies in the free Grammar School in Ip 



o"" "'" o 



but the state of things there was found so unsatisfactory, that he with other boys 

 was sent to the district school of the town. After his father's death, in 1803,. he 

 went to Newburyport, ten miles distant, and there continued his studies; first 

 under the care of Dr. Samuel Dana, and then successively under that of Mr. 

 Thomas Burn ham and Amos Choate, Esq., all graduates of Harvard College. In 

 this manner, his teaching appearing not to have been of a very high order, he 

 received all his regular school instruction. His Sundays he spent in the family of 

 his guardian, walking from Newburyport to Ipswich on Saturday afternoon, the 

 usual half-holiday of the New England schools. From his schoolfellows at this 



a- 



time we learn that he was a pleasant, though rather sedate boy, and a favorite 

 among his mates ; that he was remarkably upright, had the confidence of his com- 

 panions, was agent and treasurer in the many little pecuniary transactions common 

 to schools, because of the exactness of his accounts and his scrupulous fidelity, — 



traits of character which marked his whole life. That he held a distinguished 

 position among his fellows may be inferred from the epithet of " Captain," by which 

 he was familiarly known to them. 



The powers of imagination and composition in fruitful inventors are often 

 displayed. A friend in Glasgow, where James Watt was visiting when 



not fourteen years old, wrote to his mother : " You must take your son James 

 home ; I cannot stand the state of excitement he keeps me in ; I am worn out with 

 want of sleep. Every evening before ten o'clock, our usual hour of retiring to rest, 

 he continues to engage me in conversation; then begins some striking tale, and, 

 whether humorous or pathetic, the interest is so overpowering that all the family 

 listen to him with breathless attention, while hour after hour strikes unheeded." 

 So of young Tread well it is related that for two or three years it was his custom 



to collect the boys in the warm evenings in a circle upon the grass, and delight 



towards mo his Mod offices and this without consanguinity but from the benevolence of his nature) I give my 

 gold sleeve-buttons which were my father's." 



In a communication to the Boston Conner he thus writes of his guardian: "Colonel Nathaniel Wade was 

 an officer in the army during most of the Revolutionary War. Being with the garrison at West Point under 

 Arnold, the command of that fort by order of General Washington devolved upon him immediately after Arnold's 

 defection. This command was held but a few days, as, upon the arrival of more troops, it was necessarily 

 given to a general officer. Colonel Wade remained in the army until near the close of the war, when he returned 

 to Ipswich, his native town. Upon the breaking out of the insurrection under Shays he again went into the 

 service in command of the Essex regiment, one of the four regiments sent under General Lincoln for the 



_ _ _ killst Ae rebels in 1786-87. This was his last service in the field. During the remainder 

 of his life he lived at Ipswich, honored and beloved throughout the county for his sound judgment, his perfect 

 integrity, and his unfailing benevolence. He died in 1826, at the ripe age of seventy-seven years." His tombstone 

 in the Ipswich graveyard bears an epitaph probably written by Mr. Treadwell. 



