CHAPTER IX.
The Hicks Family.
In the home at Jericho the children of Elias Hicks were born. Touching his family we have this bit of interesting information from Elias Hicks himself:
"My wife, although not of a very strong constitution, lived to be the mother of eleven children, four sons and seven daughters. Our second daughter, a very lovely promising child, died when young with the small pox, and the youngest was not living at its birth. The rest all arrived to years of discretion, and afforded us considerable comfort, as they proved to be in a good degree dutiful children. All our sons, however, were of weak constitutions, and were not able to take care of themselves, being so enfeebled as not to be able to walk after the ninth year of their age. The two eldest died in the fifteenth year of their age, the third in his seventeenth year, and the youngest was nearly nineteen when he died. But, although thus helpless, the innocency of their lives, and the resigned cheerfulness of their dispositions to their allotments, made the labour and toil of taking care of them agreeable and pleasant; and I trust we were preserved from murmuring or repining, believing the dispensation to be in wisdom, and according to the will and gracious disposing of an all-wise providence, for purposes best known to himself. And when I have observed the great anxiety and affliction, which many parents have with undutiful children who are favoured with health, especially their sons, I could perceive very few whose troubles and exercises, on that account, did not far exceed ours. The weakness and bodily infirmity of our sons tended to keep them much out of the way of the troubles and temptations of the world; and we believed that in their death they were happy, and admitted into the realms of peace and joy; a reflection, the most comfortable and joyous that parents can have in regard to their tender offspring."[49]
[49] Journal, p. 14.
The children thus referred to by their father were the following: Martha, born in 1771. She married Royal Aldrich, and died in 1862, at the advanced age of ninety-one. She was a widow for about twenty years.
David was born in 1773, and died in 1787. Elias, the second son, was born in 1774, and died the same year as his brother David. Elizabeth was born in 1777, and died in 1779. This is the daughter who had the small pox. There are no records telling whether the other members of the family had the disease, or how this child of two years became a victim of the contagion.
Phebe, the third daughter, was born in 1779. She married Joshua Willets, as noted in the last chapter.