I

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.

Much have I seen and known,

I am a part of all that I have met."

HAVE been often asked to write some account of my life. It

has been a quiet and uneventful one, though passed during an era of great discovery and invention. I have no intention of writing an autobiography, but shall set down some recollections of things and people as I have known them, and try to retouch the fading lines of country life in New England, in the beginning of the past century.

Any human life, however humble, has some value, if presented as it really is. Mine may have some interest on account of its length, as God has preserved me to near fourscore and ten years, and I have seen nearly the whole of the nineteenth century. I wish to preserve some picture of the simple life of eighty years ago, and to give some memories of the many noble men connected with this Seminary and the Church in Virginia and elsewhere.

are.

The favorite subjects of science now are Heredity and Environment, and no doubt both have much to do in making us what we A brief account of my ancestry, which was pure English on every side, may interest some who like genealogy. I cannot say, as a mayor of Baltimore did in his happy after-dinner speeches, that "I feel I can speak to Englishmen, since my mother was of English descent, and to Irishmen, since my uncle lived in Ireland, and to Frenchmen, since my grandfather was a Huguenot, and to Germans, since my grandmother came from across the Rhine, and to Americans, because I was born in America and have been many times mayor of Baltimore." Nor do I boast of the titles and honors of my ancestors.

"My boast is not that I derive my birth

From loins enthroned, and rulers of the earth,

But higher far my proud pretensions rise,

The son of parents passed into the skies."

I can say with Marcus Aurelius that I am indebted to God for

6

BIRTH AND ANCESTRY.

having good grandfathers, good parents, good sisters, good teachers, good associates, good kinsmen and friends, nearly every thing good.

I was born in Wiscasset, Maine, Wednesday, December 23, 1812, the year of the last war with Great Britain, and was the next youngest in a family of eight, six sons and two daughters, in the sixth generation from the first settler of 1638. The year 1812 was the birth year also of Bishop Thomas M. Clark, the wise and witty lecturer, able preacher, and the present Presiding Bishop of our Church, of Austin Flint, the great physician, of Richard M. Hoe, inventor of the printing press, of Alexander H. Stephens, the Confederate vice-president.

Some interesting events took place in that year. English workmen first commenced the manufacture of pins in New York with imported machines, price one dollar a paper; the first rolling mill at Pittsburg was erected and the first cotton mill operated at Fall River, Mass.

In May, 1812, the first raising of the American flag on a schoolhouse took place at Colrain, Mass., and Daniel Webster began his political career.

Philadelphia then had 100,000 inhabitants and was larger than New York; Louisiana was admitted as the eighteenth State, and the first steam ferry-boat in this country began to run between New York and Hoboken, and the first steamboat navigated the Ohio river. I remember as a child that an excursion steamboat coming to Wiscasset excited great curiosity and people flocked to see it.

My father, Hezekiah (5) Packard, was born December 6, 1761, the year in which his great-grandfather's sister-in-law died, the second and the fifth generations meeting that year.

His father, Jacob (4), born in North Bridgewater, Mass., in 1720, married Dorothy Perkins, and had ten children, whose ages averaged eighty years each. One of them, Mrs. Thayer, was living in 1850, aged ninety-five years. Dorothy Packard, who lived to the age of ninety-three, with faculties good to the last, was remarkable for her vigorous sense, strong character, and piety. She was a daughter of Dorothy Whipple and Mark Perkins, who was a descendant of Roger Conant and Sarah Horton. Roger Conant came from England in 1623. He seceded from the Plymouth Colony, took charge of a company which settled at Salem, Mass., and was Governor there.

THE PACKARD FAMILY.

7

My great-grandfather, Solomon (3) Packard, born about 1690, married Susanna Kingman, whose grandparents were killed by the Indians in 1675, on their way to the fort at Fairhaven, Conn., where their children were staying.

My great-great-grandfather, Zaccheus (2), was born in 1653, and married Sarah Howard, whose father, John Howard, came from England and was one of the first settlers of Hingham, Mass., in 1651.

The father of Zaccheus was Samuel (1) Packard, who came from Wymondham, Norfolk County, England, with seven score other passengers in the ship Diligence, from Ipswich. He settled first at Hingham, Mass., and thence moved to West Bridgewater, Mass., in 1638. He had twelve children, and was probably married when he came over. As Professor George T. Little writes: "The lives and characters of these earlier generations, all residents of Bridgewater, Mass., were of the type their Bible names suggest, and were marked by no small share of the virtue commemorated by the vessel which bore the first of the name to this country."

A nephew, Robert L. Packard, wrote me on my semi-centennial, "It is an interesting study to notice how the tendency to certain things runs in certain families. Not a difficult thing to explain of course, on account of early precepts and example, but still interesting. Thus you, your father, and several of your brothers and relatives have been instrumental in promoting the spiritual or emotional side of people's characters. Now you recollect that the first person of our name of whom there is record, came to Massachusetts in 1638 from Norfolk, England. I read in Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials of one Thomas Packard (the name spelt as we now spell it) who was a dean in Bloody Mary's reign and was charged with the investigation of certain deaneries in Norfolk under the direction of that amiable sovereign. Cousin Tom may like to reflect on that. There

is the interesting fact that three hundred years ago a member of the family was also at work in the spiritual or intellectual task of being superior to his neighbors and pointing out the way to them."

There are several Packards now on the clergy list of England working near Norfolk County in important positions.

My mother, Mary Spring, born in 1773, was the daughter of Rev. Alpheus (5) Spring, who married, May 18, 1769, Sarah