AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AMOS KENDALL.

CHAPTER I.

THE Kendall family is one of the oldest in New England. The traditions of the family represent that two brothers, Thomas and Francis Kendall, came from England about 1640, and settled in Woburn, Massachusetts. Thomas had no sons.

Francis Kendall, the progenitor of the family, had four sons, Francis, Thomas, Ralph, and Jacob, all born in America.

Jacob, born in 1686, was twice married, and had nine sons, Jacob, Daniel, Joseph, and Hezekiah by his first wife, and John, Ebenezer, David, Nathan, and Abraham by his second wife.

John, Ebenezer, and Abraham moved to Dunstable about the year 1726. There John had five sons, John, Jacob, Temple, Edward, and Zebedee.

John the second had two sons, John and Zebedee.

Zebedee, the father of Amos, had nine sons, six of whom grew to manhood; namely, Zebedee, Samuel, George-Minot, Amos, John, and Timothy. All these were living in 1858, presenting an array of old men not common in the same brotherhood.

Amos Kendall was born on Sunday, the 16th day of August, 1789. From early boyhood he was habituated to hard work on his father's farm. The farm was composed of bog meadow, pine plains, and oak hills. The meadows yielded the coarser kinds of grasses intermixed with various ferns, cranberry-vines, and small bushes; but they also supplied most of the hay on which the cattle subsisted during the long New England winters. Through these meadows meandered a sluggish stream called Salmon Brook, stocked with various kinds of fish. The pine plains rested on a bed of gravel, and, except along the foot of the hills, were almost barren. From these, however, the bread of the family was for the

most part drawn. Next to the hills there were two four-acre fields cultivated alternately in corn and rye. The corn crop was always manured, and the rye was sown in the fall among the corn; so that these fields were manured alternately every other year. The plains between these fields and the meadows were generally used as sheep pastures, but once in five or six years they produced a very small crop of rye of excellent quality.

The oak hills were composed of clay soil, so full of rocks in many places as to preclude cultivation without removing them. With great labor small tracts were so far cleared as to become good upland meadow, furnishing excellent hay for horses and working oxen. These uplands supplied an abundance of stones, with which the whole farm, except the pine plains, was enclosed; The upthe fences were of stone combined with posts and rails. land meadows were cultivated in potatoes or corn once in five or six years, but seldom in rye, on account of its inferior quality when produced on a clay soil. A patch of flax was generally a part of the annual crop, and this, with the wool from a small flock of sheep, manufactured and made up in the household, furnished almost the entire clothing of the family.

The rougher portions of the upland, much of which was never cultivated, furnished pasturage for the horses, oxen, and milch cows during the summer; but as much of the stock as was not used. on the farm was generally driven in the spring to a pasture on Flat Mountain, in New Ipswich, N. H., twenty-five miles distant, whence it was brought back in the fall.

The father and mother of Amos Kendall were exemplary members of the Congregational Church, of which the former was a deacon. Grace before and thanks after meat, and morning and evening prayers, with the reading of a chapter in the Bible and the singing of a hymn on Sunday, accompanied by the bass-viol, played by their oldest son while he was at home, constituted the regular religious exercises of the family. The father and mother never failed to attend church on Sunday, except in case of sickness or when absent from home; and the entire family, one member only excepted, were required to maintain a like regularity in Sabbath observances. Except in special cases, all labor beyond the simplest preparation of food for man and beast and all recreation were strictly prohibited on Sunday. The evening was spent in learning and reciting the Westminster Catechism, in reading