Page:Life of Isaiah V Williamson.djvu/16

4 Hill, "Under the roof of that house is where I first opened my eyes." The speaker was Isaiah Vansant Williamson, who, with his old friend, had gone back to see kinsfolk and friends in the region of his birthplace and childhood, and to stand once more near the early home of the beloved mother who long before had journeyed on. One of the richest men in Pennsylvania, one of the most influential in the great city where he lived, began his life in that wooden house. There he lived until he was four years old. In 1807, his parents, Mahlon and Charity Williamson, moved their family to the old homestead in Falls Township, the other side of Bristol, near Trenton, where Isaiah's grandparents had lived.

This century-old farmhouse, about four miles from the village of Fallsington, appears today pretty much as it did when Mahlon and Charity Williamson were rearing a family there. After nearly four score years Isaiah Williamson was neither afraid nor ashamed to go back to Bensalem and Falls, and to take with him those with whom he had been associated in later years. This was because he had