Page:Benjamin Fisk Barrett, an Autobiography.djvu/19



CCORDING to the record in the old family Bible, I was born in Dresden, Maine, June 24, 1808, and was the youngest but one of a family of nine children—six boys and three girls. My father was a carpenter by trade. He was born in Massachusetts, and emigrated to Aina, Maine, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, while Maine was still a part of Massachusetts, called the "District of Maine" and not yet a separate State. He followed his trade there for several years; was married to my mother, Elizabeth Carlton, December, 1791; he purchased a farm of one hundred acres in Dresden when that whole region was thickly covered with forest trees, and no carriage-road ran through or near the farm. Here he erected