I have arranged the autobiographical material under three headings: Ancestry and Family Life, Childhood and Youth, and Self-Analysis.—C. B.)
ANCESTRY AND FAMILY LIFE
I am, as you know, the son of a farmer. My father was the son of a farmer, as was his father, and his. There is no break, so far as I know, in the line of farmers back into the seventeenth century. There was a Rev. George Burroughs who was hanged (in 1692) for a witch in Salem. He was a Harvard graduate. I know of no other Harvard graduate by our name until Julian (Mr. Burroughs's son) graduated in 1901 from Harvard. My father's cousin, the Rev. John C. Burroughs, the first president of Chicago University, was graduated from Yale sometime in the early forties.
The first John Burroughs of whom I have any trace came from the West Indies, and settled in Stratford, Connecticut, where he married in 1694. He had ten children, of whom the seventh was John, born in August, 1705. My descent does not come from this John, but from his eldest brother, Stephen, who was born at Stratford in February, 1695. Stephen had eight children, and here another John turns up—his last child, born in 1745. His third child, Stephen Burroughs (born in 1729), was a shipbuilder and became a noted mathematician and astronomer, and lived at Bridgeport, Connecticut. My descent is through Stephen's seventh child, Ephraim, born in 1740.
Ephraim, my great-grandfather, also had a large family, six sons and several daughters, of which my grandfather Eden was one. He was born in Stratford, about 1770. My great-grandfather Ephraim left Stratford near the beginning of the Revolution and came into New York State, first into Dutchess County, when Grandfather was a small boy, and finally settled in what is now the town of Stamford, Delaware County, where he died in 1818. He is buried in a field between Hobart and Stamford.
My grandfather Eden married Rachael Avery, and shortly afterward moved over the mountain to the town of Roxbury, cutting a road through the woods and bringing his wife and all their goods and chattels on a sled drawn by a yoke of oxen. This must have been not far from the year 1795. He cleared the land and built a log house with a black-ash bark roof, and a great stone chimney, and a floor of hewn logs. Grandmother said it was the happiest day of her life when she found herself the mistress of this little house in the woods. Great-grandmother Avery lived with them later. She had a petulant disposition. One day when reproved for something, she went off and hid herself in the bushes and sulked—a family trait; I'm a little that way, I guess.
Grandfather Burroughs was religious,—an Old-School Baptist,—a thoughtful, quiet, exemplary man who read his Bible much. He was of spare build, serious, thrifty after the manner of pioneers, and a kind husband and father. He died, probably of apoplexy, when I was four years old. I can dimly remember him. He was about seventy-two.
Grandmother Burroughs had sandy hair and a freckled face, and from her my father and his sister Abby got their red hair. From this source I doubtless get some of my Celtic blood. Grand-mother Burroughs had nine children; the earliest ones died in infancy; their graves are on the hill in the old burying-ground. Two boys and five girls survived—Phoebe, Betsy, Mary, Abby, Olly, Chauncey (my father), and Hiram.
I do not remember Grandmother at all. She died, I think, in 1838, of consumption; she was in the seventies. Father said her last words were, "Chauncey, I have but a little while to live." Her daughter Oily and also my sister Oily died of consumption. Grandmother used to work with Grandfather in the fields, and help make sugar. I have heard them tell how in 1812 they raised wheat which sold for $2.50 a bushel—a great thing.