Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v1.djvu/31

 CHAPTER I

LINEAGE, PARENTAGE, AND CHILDHOOD

the year 1619, in the then considerable, rudely built, and socially isolated city of Norwich, the shire town of Norfolk County, England, in one of the humble families, was born a child who, in due course of time, received the baptismal appellation of.

During the same year, at Jamestown, a newly founded hamlet in the wilderness of North America, a vessel, in stress of want, cast anchor in the river and offered in exchange for supplies, as their sole vendible property, sundry human chattels, which the Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony, then in command, chiefly from considerations of humanity to the destitute sailors, accepted, and the transaction was deemed of sufficient consequence to be thus jotted down in the sober chronicles of a town gossip: "About the last of August came in a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty negars." The vessel, thus relieved, proceeded home, and, coincident with its arrival in Holland, an incident occurred in a neighboring harbor, which is thus narrated by the local historian:

So they left that goodly and pleasant City of Leyden, which had been their resting place for above eleven