French and Revolutionary wars, in each of which a fort was built at the house of Gumaer, and his neighbors all collected in it, which had the effect of creating more impure air in it than when occupied by one family. This, in the first war, could not hurt the constitutions of the children as much as in the next, because its duration was shorter, and most of them were sent from here to relatives in other places, and there were not as many in the fort as in the last war when the number in it of all classes was about 100 from the time the fort was built in 1777 until the war ended. The walls of the house, both in the rooms below and on the chamber, were all lined with beds, and although the inmates of the house remained healthy, yet the collection of so many people in it, and their beds and bedding, must have created much impure air, especially in the night when the doors were shut and all were in it, whereby the constitutions of the children must have become weakened and their growth retarded, so as to have remained both weaker and smaller than what they would have been if the war had not occurred. This stagnation of growth, which caused the third generation to remain inferior in strength to their respective fathers, did not continue to debilitate in the same ratio, the fourth class, but these arrived to about or nearly the same strength of body as that of their fathers. In relation to health, however, there has been a gradual decline, and people have now become more subject to disease in this town than in former times. The Holland Dutch, who settled throughout this valley, must have had sound and strong constitutions, which their children inherited unimpaired, and the manner in which they were brought up and lived during the time of their growth in this valley must have been very conducive to sustain health and promote strength. * * * * * CHARACTERS. There are certain predominating characteristics in families which, in some cases, will remain in their descendants from generation to generation for a great length of time, and some of those of the first pioneers have thus continued in some degree in their line of descent up to the present time; and where intermarriages have occurred, of such different characters, they have generally become united in the children and, in some cases, this union resulted in better characters than that of either of the originals, and in others, worse. In respect to the characteristics of five sons of the first families who remained in the Peenpack neighborhood, I will here give a short narration, to wit: