On one corner of the public square there still remains, in fairly good repair, an old fashioned stone dwelling house. In this house on the first day of April, A.D. 1829, I was born, as were also my two older brothers, Joseph Gabriel and John Daniel, born respectively June 25, 1826, and November 30, 1827. This stone house at one time belonged to my grandfather, Gabriel Nourse, who was the son of James Nourse. The ancestors of the latter are given in a book now in the possession of your mother, entitled _James Nourse and his Descendants_. In the basement or first story of this stone building my father taught school about the time of the birth of his three boys, given above. At that early day the people of the village and surrounding country were not supposed to be very highly educated. If children were taught to read and write indifferently and something of arithmetic, at least as far as the single rule of three, their education was supposed to be sufficient for the practical purposes of life. My father has related to me that when he first commenced teaching in the village, in the presence of such a company as usually assembles around a country store, a wise man of the village explained to his admiring hearers that the cause of the changes of the moon resulted from the fact that the earth came between the sun and the moon and hence obstructed the light in such a way as to produce the new moon and the various changes until the full moon. My father rashly attempted to suggest that the wise man was mistaken, for the obvious reason that the moon in its first quarter could be seen in the heavens at the same time as the sun could be observed, and it was impossible that the moon could be partially darkened by the shadow of the earth. The wise man was rather mortified by this exposure of his ignorance, but did not acknowledge his error, but angrily reproved a young man for presuming to differ with him. In this stone building also my grandfather, Gabriel, died in April, 1839, and was buried in the village churchyard. This stone house is still standing at the date of this writing, and the basement room where my father taught school is occupied as a store-room for vending relics and curiosities gathered from the battle-fields of the neighborhood.