the ancestors, in the name-line, of its founders. Church records, when they are to be found, give marriages, baptisms, and occasionally deaths or burials, with admissions from and dismissals to, other towns. Sometimes cemetery records can be found, and inscriptions on gravestones should be examined. Inscriptions are among the least reliable of all sources of information, as the date of the record is so uncertain. Diaries of ministers or other persons of intelligence, newspapers, records of societies (notably the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company), and lists of passengers on incoming ships, are among other records, printed or in MSS., which may be found by the persistent investigator.

In addition to Family Genealogies, a valuable work called "Munsell's Index to Pedigrees" gives, alphabetically arranged under surnames, a list of books, with volume and page, containing pedigrees (that is, records of two or more generations) of that family. Sometimes several columns of references are given under one name, and in that case those books should be selected for examination which seem from their title to be of the locality or class most likely to be helpful; you would not find anyone so recent as your greatgrandmother in Savage's Genealogical Dictionary, and would not be likely to find help on an Essex County family in the history of a New York town.

There are certain standard works on genealogy which are invaluable; Savage, just mentioned, for the first three generations of New England families; Pope's Pioneers of Massachusetts, for those who came to Plymouth or Massachusetts Bay Colony before 1640; more than fifty

volumes of "The New England Historic Genealogical Register" (a complete index of which is now in press), for genealogical, biographical and historical matter on almost every family in the country; five volumes of "Mayflower Descendants," and four of "Genealogical Advertiser," both largely on Plymouth and Barnstable County families; the Essex Institute Collections, and those of the Historical Societies of each of the New England states; the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Plymouth Colony Records, and for military service, the state publications of Revolutionary records. Histories of certain of the "seed towns," towns from which colonies were sent out to form other towns, should be kept in mind; Wyman's "Charlestown," Davis's "Landmarks of Plymouth," histories of Hingham, Deerfield, and many of the early Connecticut towns, are instances. The books mentioned in this paragraph may be found in almost any of the larger public libraries in New England. The Boston Public Library has a large collection of genealogical works, including many valuable English books. The New England Historic Genealogical Society has, including its manuscripts, the largest and most valuable collection of genealogical material in the country. Its library, at 18 Somerset street, is open to the public, and there one may consult and make extracts from its collections without charge.

The value of statements made in

compilations depends upon the known diligence and accuracy of the compiler. Some books are so full of errors as to be absolutely worthless as authorities, but since even the most faulty may furnish valuable clues, they should be examined, and

their statements verified, item by item, from original records.

Among the most valuable sources of genealogical information, being rich in material and absolutely trustworthy, are the land and probate records. In Massachusetts these are to be found at the county-seats, in the court houses. Your great grandfather, John Higginson, in deeding a piece of land, says it was given to him and his brother Nathaniel by his father Jonathan, and describes it as bounded by land of the heirs of Thomas Miller. Now you already knew that John Higginson named his first boy Miller Higginson; you look again at Higginson on the grantee index, and find a deed from Thomas Miller to John Higginson, of house and land granted "for love and affection which I do bear to my only daughter Susannah, now the wife of the said John Higginson"; Thomas Miller's wife Jane joins in the deed. You cross the corridor to the Probate Registry, and there find the will of Jonathan Higginson, with wife Nancy; the will confirms to his sons John and Nathaniel the land given to them at their marriage; it also gives to John a bit of swamp land known as the Wheeler lot. Further investigation shows that Jane, the wife of Thomas Miller, was a Wheeler, and you find a deed by which Jonas Wheeler deeds the swamp lot to his well-beloved son, Thomas Miller. Such evidence of relationship is indisputable: but the entry on the town records of the birth of a Jane Wheeler twenty years before the marriage of Thomas Miller to Jane Wheeler does not show that the Jane who was born was the same as the Jane who married; she may have been an older

sister who died young, or a cousin, or even of an entirely different family; and there is nothing in the entry of marriage on the town records to show that the bride may not have been a widow, and not born a Wheeler at all. The land records are much more numerous than the probate records; in early days there was almost no renting of property, and cobblers and painters and weavers bought and sold their humble homesteads and, all unconsciously, thereby left a record of themselves for posterity. The number of wills after the first two or three generations is comparatively small, but an administrator was usually appointed and an inventory taken; occasionally a list of heirs was recorded, often the setting off of the dower of the widow, and after her death a final division of the estate, with receipts from the heirs.

The county court records give all sorts of quaint information; none more valuable than the returns from the towns of the new-comers who had been ordered or warned to depart from the town; this does not in the least indicate that the stranger was looked upon as not likely to become a desirable citizen, but that in order to secure the town against becoming liable for the support of anyone, each new-comer was legally warned out of town. If only the suspicious characters were warned out, someone's feelings might be hurt, and there might be a grave mistake some day-even the town fathers were not omniscient-but if all alike were legally prevented from acquiring a settlement, immunity from liability was secured, and no one could complain. The value of the warning consists, for genealogical purposes,

in its usually stating the town whence the stranger came.

State House archives show civil and military service, signatures to petitions, and in early years an astonishing mass of miscellaneous information. In Massachusetts, certain of the volumes have been carefully indexed, but there are still others which must be examined page

by page in search of what you wish to find. The great events of the past may here be studied at first hand, and the facts about your ancestors discovered from the records of their families, churches, towns, and counties, may be fitted at last, each in its place, into the beautiful mosaic of the history of New England.

IN

N the series of poems by Whittier which have appeared from time to time in the New England we now come to one written October II, 1828.

His first published poem, "The Exile's Daughter," appeared in the Free Press of Newburyport in June, 1826. It is not among the earlier collections of his poems, but is in the appendix of the Riverside edition, 1888. It was written when he was but twenty years old and before he had had an opportunity to become familiar with any of the best literature of the world, excepting the few religious books of his father's library. These consisted of less than thirty volumes, most of which were dissertations on Quakerism and which Whittier knew by heart. He said of them, as he grew older, that he loved their authors because they were so saintly and yet so humbly unconscious of it.

The editor of the Free Press, William Lloyd Garrison, soon called upon the Whittier household and urged the father to give a classical education to his son, but pecuniary circumstances forbade the thought

of such luxury. Six months later, Abijah W. Thayer, editor of the Haverhill Gazette, sought him out and made the same plea, to which the older Whittier finally yielded, giving his consent provided Whittier should pay his own way. This Whittier was able to do by making slippers for eight cents (which sold for twenty-five cents a pair), and it is said that he reckoned on having twenty-five cents left over when all expenses were paid for the six months at the Academy, and came out with exactly that amount.

Years afterward Mr. Whittier, writing to Mr. Garrison, said: "My father did not oppose me: he was proud of my pieces, but as he was in straitened circumstances, he could do nothing to aid me. My mother always encouraged me and sympathized with me.”

That winter, however, while he hammered and sewed, he thought and wrote a most prodigious amount. During the last two months before entering the Academy he composed ten poems, besides the Ode which was sung at the opening of the new building May 1st, 1827. No copy of

this ode is in existence, although at the time it created much interest that a song, sung at so important a ceremony, should have been written by a country boy who was about to enter as a pupil.

These poems are crude, and grammatical structure has yielded to the necessity of rhyme; but they should not be criticised. It is not surprising that errors should have been made. That they could have been written at all is the wonder.

"The Days Gone By" shows markedly the result of Whittier's study. It was written the spring before he finished his two terms in the Haverhill Academy, where he had come in contact for the first time with those books of history, romance and poetry that had opened to him. such a vast field of knowledge. Here he found an ample variety of subjects for his versatile pen.

While in the Academy he studied the usual English branches and French, and he speaks in his later years of his mingled feeling of "awe and pleasure" on gazing for the first time upon the well-filled shelves of a private library. Think of the pleasure of that brilliant, imaginative mind when at twenty years of age he became acquainted with Shakespearean verse.

During 1828 a remarkable number of his poems were printed, most of which have been dropped from the later editions of his work. Already he had won considerable local distinction, and a good many of his poems had been copied by other papers. It is surprising how few of those poems which first brought his name to public notice are still in print. Some years after the publication of his first book he became dissatisfied with these early writings, and made great effort to recall the

entire edition, saying that they did not seem like him. He went so far as to pay five dollars for one copy, in order to burn it, and debarred nearly all from other collections of his writings.

Two weeks after the date of "The Days Gone By," a long poem, "The Outlaw," appeared in the Haverhill Gazette, it being the first to be signed by his full name. Before this he had written under a variety of pseudonyms-usually "Adrian." When he wrote in the Scottish dialect he used "Donald," and at other times "Timothy," "Micajah,” “Ichabod," or "W."

It was in 1828 also that Mr. Thayer purposed to publish a volume of Whittier's poems, entitled "The Poems of Adrian." He published a prospectus stating that the proceeds would be devoted to assisting the young author in getting a "higher education," but he was interrupted, the plan fell through, and Whittier was obliged to "work his way" unassisted.

This he did by

teaching a district school in West Amesbury throughout the winter term of 1827-28, of which he says afterwards: "I had rather be a tin peddler and drive around the country with a bunch of sheepskins hanging to my wagon." He also eked out his income by keeping books for a merchant of the town. In Whittier a strong retrospective tendency developed while he was yet in school. He delighted in the old things. He looked back at the past achievements of the colonists and revelled in their heroisms and romances. He loved the past and dreaded change. In many of his poems a plea for the past is voiced, which later on was answered by legends and historical tales of New England from his own pen.