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

CHAPTER VI
THE OLD FARM
HAT a wealth of associations clusters about
the old farm which James Watkins, our grand-
father, cleared from the primitive forest!
Where shall I begin to write of those acres
bought from one Finney, who obtained his
patent from government in the beginning of the
J nmeteenth century and transferred his right
to our grandfather not far from the year 1804? From him it
descended to our father, so that to us children it seemed our
own little world, in which we might always live just as we had
done — a world whose lines were well defined by the fences
which bound in this little farm: Neighbor Isaac Bruin on the
east, Robinson and Raymond on the west, Alexander and
Matthew Brown on the north, and James Cummings on the
south. I remember all these lines, with the thick rails staked
with heavy riders to keep out breachy cattle; these were the
boundaries to our little world of home. To scale the high
fences was to make a lofty and daring venture out into the
great world ; places of defense were they, too, when being chased
by dogs or fierce domestic animals, such as Jennie, our cross
horse.
Here on the old farm we four children were born, as our
father had been before us. Brother William, the eldest, in
early childhood gave promise of the intellectual man he became
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