a eee re a rN eT TN CL ee rem me ee ee eee ee eee 
1810.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 3 
his father died. He used to say that he had only 
six weeks of schooling; whether before or after 
his father’s death I am ignorant. But soon after 
that event he was apprenticed to a tanner and cur- 
rier (Mr. Gier) at Sauquoit, in whose employment 
he must have been for a part of the time after he 
came of age, for I was born in a little house which 
had been a shoe-shop on the premises of the tan- 
ard. 
The fact of being born supposes a maternal ancestry. 
July 30, 1809, my father married Roxana Howard. 
She was born in Longmeadow, Mass., March 15, 
1789; was a daughter of Joseph Howard, who was 
born in Pomfret, Conn., March 8, 1766, and of 
Submit (Luce) Howard, born at Somers, Conn., 
April 8, 1767;! and he was the grandson of John 
Howard of Ipswich,? Mass., and of Elisabeth Smith, 
of the same town. He was the descendant of Thomas 
Howard, who, with his wife and children, came from 
Aylesford (or Maidstone), Kent, in the year 1634. 
y mother came with her parents to Oneida County 
and the Sauquoit Valley when only a few years old.® 
Her father there joined a company which set up an 
iron-forge. One of the early pieces of work of its 
ip heanmer was to forge off three of my maternal 
1 She was married in 1788 
2 The house is still standing which, built in 1648 by an ancestor of 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, was bought by William Howard, in 1669. 
3 Asa’s mother was but four years old, when the family moved to 
boats of that time. Joseph Howard was a man of a very lovable 
character, as shown from the affectionate remembrances of him by his 
grandchildren, the eldest of whom, Asa, was much with him. He was 
a deacon of the First Church in Daiiseaach ik years, and one of 
the leading men in the town. He died in 
