In Kentucky, while we lived on Indian Creek, I learned to swim, an exercise I have ever excelled in, and been delighted with. I love water and bathing now, at the age of forty seven or eight, as well as any boy in the city where I am writing.

From Indian Creek, myself and other boys, accompanied generally by grown persons, learned to go to mill-and in the summer season, we went to Barbourville to mill, some nine or ten miles. Here, I first remember to have seen the business of retailing dry goods in a store. It struck me as a most plesant business-infinitely preferable in gentility and ease to working on a farm. Now my opinion is precisely the reverse.

After we had lived on Laurel, and returned to Watts Creek, and I had acquired some rudiments of useful general knowledge under the teaching of Mr. Aulgen, and from reading every sort of book I could get hold of, I made a trip in dry season, when the country mills were stopped for want of water, to Cox's old mill at Barbourville. As we went from our neighborhood, several in company-the distance being nearly twenty miles-we were detained a day and more, waiting for our grists, as the mill was very much thronged with persons who had gotten there with grists before us. During the delay, I wandered up to the town-the county town of Knox-where a circuit court was sitting in a large old log house. I inquired the name of the judge, and all the lawyers, as they engaged in speaking, or were employed in reading, writing, talking with clients, or lounging about the rude bar. The judge was the late (or perhaps present) Judge Wm. Kelly-a rough, honest, Irish spoken man as I remember him. The late Col. Samuel McKee, afterwards in Congress and a Judge, was one of the lawyers. The late Wm. Logan, a very neat, smooth spoken little man, was another. He and the late George Walker of Nicholasville, Jessamine Co., Ky. argued a cause, upon some point of law, upon demurrer, at great length. In the debate, I heard for the first time, the word demurrer, and the word venue. The question was one of jurisdiction, arising in some attachment in a technical and judicial sense.

Tunstall Quarles, since in Congress and now a Judge, and who owns my old Aunt Polly Duncan's old residence in Whitley, near Williamsburg, was also present, one of the finest, best drest, and vainest looking men I had ever seen. Col. Rhodes Garth of Wayne was also present, and a lawyer named Jackman, both very young, unemployed, looking men.

Joseph Eve, who had then represented Knox one year in the Assembly, and Wm. McNutt from Knoxville, Tennessee, were present as young lawyers. Eve became a Judge afterwards, and was by Gen. Harrison, or Taylor, in fulfillment of Harrison's promise, appointed Minister to Texas in 1819, and died there at Galveston in 1847 or 1843. He was succeeded by Gen. Tilghman A. Howard of Indiana, who also died there in 1844. McNutt tried the law at Barbourville-got married to a Miss Jewett-could not succeed-and went back to Tennessee. He went to Bedford County as a Land Surveyor at an early time, and a few years ago-in 1840-was living in Henry Co., West Tenn., a vagabond old schoolmaster, separated from his second wife. When I thus saw him in Barbourville, about 1808 or 1809, he was a very gay, fashionable young man.

Nearly all those I there saw as lawyers, are long since dead. Logan became distinguished, as did McKee, and Thomas Montgomery who was also there. He spoke in the law suit I have mentioned. He was once afterwards prominent in Congress.

From the time I witnessed these incidents, when I was eleven or twelve years old, I contracted, and never lost sight of a most ardent desire to become a lawyer. I had the year before, read in a file of Virginia newspapers, a report of Burr's trial, with the speeches of Wirt, Botts, Wickham, Hay etc. at full length. This had kindled the flame-the witnessing of discussions in a respectable court, the first such I had ever seen, conducted by able men-some of them noted for wit and correct speaking-blew up the fire of my secret desires to a perfect flame. In 1806 and seven, I had read some debates in the Kentucky Assembly in a paper I think called the Western World, edited by one Street, which was sent to my Uncle Thomas. The report of Burr's trial I first read in the Staunton Eagle, and then in a book-an abridged, but correct report I think, by Wm. Thompson, then a lawyer of Abingdon, and brother of the talented young Thompson of Petersburgh, then dead, who wrote "Curtin's letters to John Marshall, against the federalists in old John Adams time. I had also seen some straggling members occasionally of the National Intelligence and Richmond Enquirer in 1805-6-7, continuing debates in Congress. These things, all conspired to made me pray night and day, that at some time I might become a lawyer and public speaker. For fear of ridicule, however, I kept my secret and consuming desires a profound secret. I read, however, with a view to acquiring general knowledge, for which I had an insatiable thirst, every book I could get hold of. I read the Bible, for history, again and again. A man named Woodson-Wade Woodson, an intemperate and unfortunate old lawyer, with an amiable family, bought or rented, and went to live at Arthurs old mill on Spruce Creek in 1808. That was the mill we attended to get meal. Finding Woodson had many good books, and that he and his wife loved to encourage learning, even in an awkward untutored mill boy, a stranger to them too, I continued always for a year or eighteen months, to get myself sent to mill every week or fortnight, to Woodsons, where I had an opportunity of borrowing and returning books, and of getting the advice of Mrs. Woodson and her husband upon my course of reading. After I had heard the lawyers speak in Barbourville, of which I gave Mr. Woodson an account, he explained to me, as well as I could comprehend it, all the hard words they used.

These excellent people-he a perfect gentleman and she a lady of the old school-both intimate with Mr. Jefferson and his family before they had removed to Kentucky-were of infinite service to me. From them, I borrowed and read carefully, an edition of the Spectator in 8 volumes. I read it so studiously, or even for a long time to remember the exact substance, and much of the language of Mr. Addison's admirable criticisms on Paradise Lost-Criticism which first brought that great poem into its merited appreciation in England. I borrowed and read several volumes of Saulavie's French Revolutionary Biography, illustrated by engraved portraits of the heads of the great leaders in that wonderful political event. Among other smaller works, I borrowed and read an answer to Paine's Age of Reason, by a Jew named Levi. As far as the Old Testament was concerned, it was a calm, able, manly defence, full of charity and good feeling, and made the first strong and lasting impression my mind received in youth, of the truth of the Bible. I esteemed the author himself-a Jew-whose people had continued always known, and ever unchanged-holding the Bible as an unchanged record received from his fathers, always known as a revelation from God, and never denied or doubted, by the very people to whom the revelation was originally made in their own tongue-and among whom, sacredly preserved, the Bible-at least all the canonical books-and others of more doubtful authority-have been kept without alteration from the earliest ages of the world. They were collected, as preserved, carefully transcribed, and deposited in the temple after the return from the Babylonion captivity. These facts of the preservation of these books, of the records unchanged being kept by an unchanged people-such books in matter and manner-is wisdom, moral truth, and sublimity of composition, as uninspired man never could have made-such compositions as man of himself in no other age or nation ever has made-is to me now, and when I read Mr. Levi's argument in infancy comparatively, and which I have not seen for thirty-five years-was conclusive proof per. se of the truth of the Bible itself as a revelation from God. Of the truth of the Old Testament, every living Jew is a living witness-as much so as one of the most eminent of the prophets would be if he had lived like the fabled wandering Jew down to this day, and was now living among us.

Mr. Woodson also had Watson's answer to Paine-but these were books his excellent wife read more than he did. Among his books for the first time I met with and read a translation of Ovid by different hands into English verse. He furnished me also, I believe, Dryden's Virgil.

About this time, I somewhere met with, and read Tom Jones, Roderick Random, and Peregrine Pickle-worth all the novels and romances written from Fielding and Smolletts time down to Sir Walter Scott.

From an old man, a Mr. Barton, I think, I procured, and my mother and myself read Bishop Newton on the Prophesies, and a work by Derham on natural religion and natural history, called "Physico-Medico-Theology", as well as I remember. My grandfather sent me about 1809, Goldsmith's Natural History, large Richmond edition, in 4 volumes, with find plates. I considered it a rich present-and read, and re-read it, until I was master of the history of nearly all the animals in the world.

After my father removed to Virginia, in 1809, as before related, I went to school, during part of the year 1811, or fall of 1810, and 1811, to a gentleman named Burroughs (Joseph) at the old Bovell meeting house, near Shugart's old place, boarding at my grandfather Duncan's. We lived at about one mile or mile and a half's distance from the old man, as near the school house as where he lived, but as he and grandmother were lonesome, they wanted company. Mr. Burroughs taught me English Grammar, from a grammar by Harrison, and an abridgement of Murray's Grammar. He added by his instructions to my knowledge of arithmetic. During this time, the late Thomas McChesney, who had received a sound early classical education, became my friend, and encouraged my habits of reading and study. He had a tolerably good library for the country and furnished me with many books. He had Helen Maria William's Letters on the French Revolution which I read and Bancroft's Life of Washington. I borrowed from him and also read Cudworth's Intellectual System, a book entirely beyond my depths of comprehension. Morse's large geography, with maps, was of more use to me than any book of his I read. Either Gordon's or Snowden's history of the American Revolution fell in my way and was read about this time. In all these desultory readings, and by a constant habit of written compositions-mostly in correspondence by letters- I aimed at improvement-and in improvement, faintly hoped that at sometime in some way, providence would open a door by which I could sometime become a lawyer, though from what I now felt and knew, from what I saw daily, I was aware of the inseperable defects of my early education, and which I saw no possible way to overcome or remedy, I never believed I could rise even to mediocrity in that or any other profession requiring learning. I looked with great admiration on all learned men. I saw Edward and John Campbell, and Henry St. John Dixon, as lawyers, and Mr. Bovell, (Rev. Stephen) and Mr. Harper as clergymen, and I envied them nothing but their scholarship. I prayed and toiled for knowledge and thought if I had learning enough to enable me to read all good books understandingly, and only had a good library, or access to a good library, that I should be a happy man, and content to live even in want of all luxuries and finery-all superfluities of all sorts, if I could only be wise. Knowledge was all it seemed to me I wanted to make me happy.

Sometime in February, 1811, Mr. Thomas McChesney informed me that Mr. Samuel Fulton, living twelve or fifteen miles from my father's- an old country merchant of the firm of Samuel & Andrew Fulton-Samuel being the active man, Andrew living on a farm in Augusta County, was about to set a man up in business, and send him to the West with a stock of goods, named Andrew Buchanan-that Buchanan would perhaps want a clerk or store keeper-and that, as he knew Fulton well, he would give me a letter to him to enable me possibly to get the situation. He gave me a letter. I had never seen Mr. Fulton, or any person on his place. He had a store, a large farm, and carried on large blacksmiths shops, Sadler's shops etc., making farming tools and saddles to supply his various mercantile establishments in which he had set up many young partners in different parts of the country. Of such establishments, he had an interest in many. He had set up one John M. Moore, at Monticello, Wayne Co. Ky.- W. B. Carter, since a member of Congress, at Elizabethton, Carter Co. Tenn.-Maj. Tate near Kings Salt Works-and John I. Hayter in the same part of the country. On his own account, Wm. Glenn and Francis Porterfield (who died of cholera as a merchant in Nashville in 1834 or 1835) kept a store at Sparta, White Co., Tennessee, and Wm. Snodgrass one at Blountville, Sullivan Co., East Tennessee-Andrew Buchanan, now, in a partnership, was going to McMinnville, Warren Co. Tenn.

I delivered my letter to Squire Fulton, whom I found to be a dignified, kind old gentleman. I remained at his house a few days by his request, stayed about the store, and was treated with much kindness by the clerks. James Lowry and John H. Fulton, Andrew Fulton's son, and afterwards a lawyer of Abingdon, and member of the Virginia Senate, and member of Congress in 1834-5, were two of the clerks, and were, about that time, admitted to a partnership, in the business there at home, under the name of John H. Fulton, James Lowry & Co. I got acquainted with Mr. Buchanan, whose parents lived in the neighborhood, who was there laying off his goods from a new stock just received from Baltimore, where the Fultons bought all their goods, and from whence they were all conveyed in wagons to the western part of Virginia, by way of Frederick, Harper's Ferry, Winchester, Staunton, Wythe Court House, Etc. I found Mr. Buchanan to be an inquisitive, plain, worthy batchelor, who asked me a thousand questions. He seemed pleased with my handwriting, my arithmetic, and love of books. At that time, and nearly through life I have labored under a peculiar timidity in approaching, and making the acquaintance of strangers. Besides I was excessively awkward in my manners, and plain and common in my common homespun country dress. I had no other kind of clothing. All my clothes were made by my good mother-sometimes with the assistance of my grandmother, and Aunt Eleanor Campbell, who lived with her husband at my grandfather's plantation, his cabin standing precisely where the house stood in which my father afterwards lived after the death of my grandmother, and until 1829, when I removed him to Tennessee.

Mr. Buchanan agreed with me, that if I would go home, and return to Mr. Fulton's in a few days, he would give me an answer as to whether he would employ me. I told him frankly that wages was not so much an object with me as to obtain an opportunity of learning the business of acquiring knowledge generally.

On the day appointed, I returned, near the last of February, 1811, and the next day, he engaged me to go out to what was then West (now Middle) Tennessee, and keep store for him for one year at McMinnville, for Ninety dollars per annum-he finding me boarding and washing, and I finding my own clothes the first year; and if we agreed, and I should stay longer with him, the wages for future time was to be the subject of a new agreement. I was then in my fifteenth year, and would be fully fifteen on the first day of May, after making this agreement. The country I was going to was three hundred miles from home-was a new country-having been purchased from the Cherokee Indians in 1805 or 1806, and had begun to be first settled in 1807. In the General Assembly at Knoxville, of 1807, the County of Warren had been created in November, and taken from White and Smith etc. In December, at the same session, finding there were people and territory enough, Franklin County had also been laid off and established. They had both before, for some years, constituted a portion of White County, and the first courts had been held at Rock Island. Major Isaac Taylor, who was one of the early sheriffs of White has told me that he several times had to travel from his residence on Taylor's Creek, in White, to Bean's Creek, twelve miles below where Winchester stands to simply serve subponeas on witnesses.

At Mr. Fulton's, they furnished me a few articles of goods for clothing, charged to Mr. Buchanan, and a few dollars to bear my expenses. Mr Buchanan was to leave at once, go ahead of the wagon that was to carry the goods, and get a store house prepared. The wagon-for the whole stock of dry goods and groceries for a retail business made but one five horse team load, and was to be hauled out by the late Lewis Shell for-about nine dollars the hundred pounds-and the goods, by invoice, only cost about $2500.00-I say, the wagon was to leave in a few days afterwards, and I was to follow on after the wagon, as soon as I could.

I went home, got my few articles of clothing made-one thing being a coarse great coat-and set out into the world, my own man to seek my fortune. I left my fathers I think, about the 10th of March. Many tears between myself, my mother, and little brothers, were shed at parting. My father and some friends went with me as far as my grandfather Laughlin's. The night before, I had taken leave of my grandfather and grandmother Duncan, and Uncle Sam Campbell's family.

My excellent old grandfather Laughlin had given me a young horse and saddle, bridle and saddlebags. When I called to take leave, he added ten dollars in specie to his gifts, with which, and receiving his blessing, and parting with my father and other friends, I set off on my journey with a heavy heart; but being young-the whole world fresh and before me-full of hope and full of a wish to see and hear-with no experience of the troubles, pains, and vexations of life, all my melancholy soon left me. Since I have become a man, and since I have known the world, and have felt how indispensable the society of kindred and confidential friends are to all happiness in this world, I have been surprised and wondered again and again how it happened, with my strong love of home and my family, that I ventured, and was enabled to command courage to leave home under such circumstances. I believe, however, without attributing small occurences, relating to our personal affairs to any special providence, that under the general providence of God, my lot was cast, and that all of my future course in life was to be altered, and dependant upon the very incident of my leaving home at that time, under the engagement I had made. Making the engagement-the accident of McChesney learning that Buchanan was going west, and my hearing of it, and obtaining his letter to Fulton, which procurred me the place, humble as it was, all seem the effect of chance and accident-but as things have gone with me in life, as hereafter related, I ascribe it all to Providence-to the good providence of God, to whom I owe a greater debt of gratitude for my preservation through inumerable ills in life, and for thousands of mercies, than any man now living, old or young.

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