Page:Life of Isaiah V Williamson.djvu/36

20 aptitude for business, though not in an extraordinary manner. He was simply a prompt, painstaking, dependable, industrious fellow with good sense and right principles, with a greater liking for a store than the farm.

Naturally, he thought of the store at Fallsington, where his family dealt and where he was known. He applied there for a position. The storekeeper, Harvey Gillingham, was willing to take him as an apprentice. In those days, the system of apprenticing was the rule everywhere and, so far as is known, young Williamson became an indentured apprentice for a term of six or seven years.

Every one that knew Williamson intimately, knows that up to his death, he earnestly maintained that the best thing that happened to him when he was young was his apprenticeship to Harvey Gillingham. In those days, the apprentice was obliged to live with his employer, and received beside his board, lodging, and clothes, not more than fifty dollars the first year, with increases of wages each year. Beside the little store in the village of five hundred inhabitants, Gillingham had