AT, 3.] AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 5 
I was sent to the district school near by when three years 
old; and I either remember some of my performances 
of that or the next year, or have been told them in 
such way as to leave the matter doubtful.! My earliest 
and died very soon after, in May, 1811, aged twenty-three. When 
the child was born, November 18, 1810, it was carried to him to 
trained. The hands employed on farm or in trade were generally 
grain 
the farm grew, more cows were added. Then the clothing was Sis me- 
made. The wool for flannel sheets and underclothing and for the 
men’s clothes was home-spun, the nicer portions taken off and carded 
separately, and spun as worsted for the children’s and women’s 
d : : 
1 was hired for part of the year, for was also spun for the 
house linen and for wearing-apparel. T aving 
e the w to make up the clothing with the 
that spinning. It is alsosaid that the Irish potato was first introduced 
into New England by these same colonists. 
A widowed sister came with her children to make her home under 
the same roof when the Grays moved later to a larger farm, and 
there seemed always some boy to be housed and taught and trained. 
Though his aid might tell out of doors, the home care came upon the 
mother. But Mrs. Gray was a woman of singularly quiet and gentle 
character, with great strength and decision, and possessed a wonderful 
power of accomplishing and turning off work ; a woman of thoughtful, 
earnest ways, conscientious and self-forgetting. 
The father was quick, decided, and an immense worker; from him 
the son took his lively movements and his quick eagerness of 
f fun. 
1 His mother, having another child, was probably glad to have the 
