The work might have been made more interesting as well as entertaining, had I deemed myself at liberty to have published letters addressed to my father by persons of eminence in this country, as well as in Europe. But those communications that were intended to be private, shall remain so; as I do not think I have a right to amuse the public either against, or without, the inclinations of those who confided their correspondence to his care.

I regret, that more of the present work is not the production of my father’s pen; and I hope the reader will make allowance for the imperfection of that portion of it, for which I have made myself responsible.

JOSEPH PRIESTLEY.
Northumberland, Pennsylvania,
May 1st, 1805.

MEMOIRS
OF
Dr. JOSEPH PRIESTLEY.
[WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.]

Having thought it right to leave behind me some account of my friends and benefactors, it is in a manner necessary that I also give some account of myself; and as the like has been done by many persons, and for reasons which posterity has approved, I make no farther apology for following their example. If my writings in general have been useful to my cotemporaries, I hope that this account of myself will not be without its use to those who may come after me, and especially in promoting virtue and piety, which I hope I may say it has been my care to practice myself, as it has been my business to inculcate them upon others.

My father, Jonas Priestley, was the youngest son of Joseph Priestley, a maker and dresser of woollen cloth. His first wife, my mother, was the only child of Joseph Swift, a farmer at Shafton, a village about six miles south east of Wakefield. By this wife he had six children, four sons and two daughters. I, the oldest, was born on the thirteenth of March, old style 1733, at Fieldhead about six miles south west of Leeds in Yorkshire. My mother dying in 1740, my father married again in 1745, and by his second wife had three daughters.

My mother having children so fast, I was very soon committed to the care of her father, and with him I continued with little interruption till my mother’s death.

It is but little that I can recollect of my mother. I remember, however, that she was careful to teach me the Assembly’s Catechism, and to give me the best instructions the little time that I was at home. Once in particular, when I was playing with a pin, she asked me where I got it; and on telling her that I found it at my uncle’s, who lived very near to my father, and where I had been playing with my cousins, she made me carry it back again; no doubt to impress my mind, as it could not fail to do, with a clear idea of the distinction of property, and of the importance of attending to it. She died in the hard winter of 1739, not long after being delivered of my youngest brother; and having dreamed a little before her death that she was in a delightful place, which she particularly described, and imagined to be heaven, the last words she spake, as my aunt informed me, were “Let me go to that fine place.”

On the death of my mother I was taken home, my brothers taking my place, and was sent to school in the neighbourhood. But being without a mother, and my father incumbered with a large family, a sister of my father’s, in the year 1742, relieved him of all care of me, by taking me entirely to herself, and considering me as her child, having none of her own. From this time she was truly a parent to me till her death in 1764.

My aunt was married to a Mr. Keighly, a man who had distinguished himself for his zeal for religion and for his public spirit. He was also a man of considerable property, and dying soon after I went to them, left the greatest part of his fortune to my aunt for life, and much of it at her disposal after her death.