Page:Benjamin Fisk Barrett, an Autobiography.djvu/20

10 a small house in the woods, which some years later he enlarged into a respectable two-story mansion having eight rooms, with a porch that served as a wash-room. He cleared the land of trees—that is, so much of it as he was able to place under cultivation; working on the farm during the summer, and pursuing his carpenter's trade at Alna during the winter—walking each Monday morning four or five miles, often with a load of tools on his back, and returning home Saturday nights. This I often heard from my mother's lips; and how in my father's absence she was repeatedly visited by Indians, who at that time were quite numerous in that part of the country.

My father was a sturdy, healthy, industrious, hard-working man, thoroughly honest and highly respected by all who knew him. Before he had been in Dresden many years, public roads were opened (one across his farm and within two or three rods of his house) and public schools established; in these he always took a deep interest, and was, during my school-boy days, always one of the committee to hire teachers and visit and look after the interests of the school in our district. And for a number of years in succession he was chosen