Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

20 ANNALS OF OUR ANCESTORS
grandmothers knitted as they rode to market or to and from
the neighbors' houses; it is even told of one industrious woman
that she carried her knitting to her father's funeral in order not
to be idle on the way.
Grandfather's blacksmith forge was set up near the cabin,
and until late in life he had plenty to do, dividing his time between
clearing his land or farming it and plying his trade.
They did not live always in the first little cabin, but soon built
a hewn log house of larger proportions; nor did their family
remain so small. In their first little home on the farm was
born their elder son, Joseph, on Saturday, October 26, 1805.
In the larger hewn log house their third child, Benjamin Utter,
was born on September 14, 181 1.
The years passed until grandmother's eldest-born, William
Utter, who had been left behind in New Jersey, should have
attained his majority. She began to watch for his arrival, and
through the waiting years it became a habit of hers to stand
on the porch and look down the Winton Road to see if her boy
were coming. When she saw a young man well mounted
approaching, she thought, "It is William;" but each passed on.
One day she heard that a new family had come from "Jersey"
and had settled three miles north of them, so they went over
for news from their "far country." With what painful eager-
ness the mother must have awaited the knowledge of her son's
delay! There was still no mail service over the mountains,
and grandmother could only hope for some word of mouth
brought by emigrants from New Jersey.
It was but sad news that greeted her, for the new-comers
told her that WiUiam had died at the age of twenty — only
one year before he was to have come to her. She not only
missed seeing him grow into young manhood, but it was not
even hers to know those details of his development which
mothers so treasure; for her it was to be as though death had
claimed him when they had first parted in New Jersey long
before. Never again did she watch for the well-mounted
young man riding down the Winton Road, nor on seeing such
a horseman did she call the little brothers from their play to
watch the approach of William.