Dea. Martin Foote, the husband of Betsey, was a student in Middlebury College for two years, it is believed, in the distinguished class of 1813, but by reason of impaired health, he was unable to complete the course.
A few words in regard to the Log-Book may not be inappropriate. It seems to be a mere waif that has floated on the current, and among a thousand things that have perished, to have been, as it were by accident, preserved. A portion of the volume seems to be a kind of a private journal kept by my grandfather, for a few weeks in 1778. He does not appear to have valued it greatly, as on the blank leaves, he has made some entries of his business, as town clerk, and some as county surveyor, and afterward, a few notes of account with his son Elijah, who took a part of his farm. His last entry in it, as if it were in part a waste blank book, was made forty-eight years after he left the Oliver Cromwell, in 1826.
It must have come into my father’s hands with some other papers, on the division of his father’s effects in 1839. Both seem to have been reluctant to destroy anything, though they did not much value it. My father, at last, weary of keeping it, would seem to have given it to me merely for its blank pages, as scribbling paper. Six leaves, apparently blank, were torn out. Several pages are covered with mere vacant scrawling by my boyish hand; whether I threw it away in utter contempt, or concealed it back of the old chimney, in curious conjecture whether some unborn generations, would not at some distant day discover it, and puzzle over it, I cannot tell. I have no recollection of it whatever; except that I had a general impression that we used to have more of grandfather’s writings than we possessed in later years. Whether we had still others I know not. How little of such writing survives for a century! It was lost for forty years, till a quarter of a century after we had sold and left the house. It was found in 1884, in a dark recess, back of the chimney, in the garret, by Master Fred. Jones, the son of an esteemed friend, who in her childhood, about the time of the loss of this manuscript, was a member of my father’s household. Many years afterwards, she became the worthy mistress of the house, and this lad, exploring things in general, came across this old Log-Book. If it is of any interest or value; to him and to Dr. J. M. Currier, the accomplished secretary of the Rutland County Historical Society, and to James Brennan, Esq., an old schoolmate who took an interest in the manuscript, is due all the credit of its publication.