ed with the Episcopal
Church.

Josiah, my father, married young, and carried his wife with three
children into New England, about 1682. The conventicles having been
forbidden by law, and frequently disturbed, induced some considerable
men of his acquaintance to remove to that country, and he was prevailed
with to accompany them thither, where they expected to enjoy their mode
of religion with freedom. By the same wife he had four children more
born there, and by a second wife ten more, in all seventeen; of which I
remember thirteen sitting at one time at his table, who all grew up to
be men and women, and married; I was the youngest son, and the youngest
child but two, and was born in Boston, New England. My mother, the
second wife, was Abiah Folger, daughter of Peter Folger, one of the
first settlers of New England, of whom honorable mention is made by
Cotton Mather in his church history of that country, entitled Magnalia
Christi Americana, as "a godly, learned Englishman," if I remember the
words rightly. I have heard that he wrote sundry small occasional
pieces, but only one of them was printed, which I saw now many years
since. It was written in 1675, in the home-spun verse of that time and
people, and addressed to those then concerned in the government there.
It was in favor of liberty of conscience, and in behalf of the
Baptists, Quakers, and other sectaries that had been under persecution,
ascribing the Indian wars, and other distresses that had befallen the
country, to that persecution, as so many judgments of God to punish so
heinous an offense, and exhorting a repeal of those uncharitable laws.
The whole appeared to me as written with a good deal of decent
plainness and manly freedom. The six concluding lines I remember,
though I have forgotten the two first of the stanza; but the purport of
them was, that his censures proceeded from good-will, and, therefore,
he would be known to be the author.

"Because to be a libeller (says he)
I hate it with my heart;
From Sherburne town, where now I dwell
My name I do put here;
Without offense your real friend,
It is Peter Folgier."

My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was
put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to
devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church. My
early readiness in learning to read (which must have been