My earliest recollections carry me to this house; to the well that stood before it; to the old pear tree and apple tree near by. But clearest in my memory are the white bread, the rich butter and sweet milk, that "Grandmother" dealt out to her hungry juvenile visitors with such liberal hand. Oh, how peaceful and sweet appear the beginnings of life when we look back upon them from the smoking perilous battle field of manhoods labors. At nineteen years of age, Rebecca Gould was sought and won in marriage by James Steward. He was then a young man of promise, a steady and thrifty mechanic, having worked nine years in the Cumberland Nail and Iron works. He had been reared practically an orphan, his mother having gone to San Domingo, doubtless with an intention of one day returning. She never returned; and thus his last earthly relative, so far as he knew, departed. Alone he battled his way up. Providence, however, ultimately gave him a home in the family of Elijah Gould, father of Rev. T. Gould, where he remained until twenty-one. At twenty-four years of age he took to his side Rebecca Gould and the twain became one. Of James Steward and Rebecca, were born six children, viz: Margarette, William, Mary, Theophilus Gould, Alice, and Stephen Smith. Permit me henceforth to speak of this couple as my father and mother, and I beg the reader to pardon me, if I should manifest a degree of love and respect, which may seem to him somewhat partial. I write, I trust, as a man who feels that there can be no nobler sentiment than real filial love. Neither my father or mother were Christians at the time of marriage. They commenced life in the town; but as children were born to them, although they had purchased a home in the village, they sold it and went to the country. The principal object had in view in this matter, was to keep their children in a pure and health giving moral, as well as physical, atmosphere. I am not certain which took the lead in this change, father or mother; but it is presumable that as father had been reared in the town and mother in the country, it was done directly or indirectly through her influence. Fortunately father and mother agreed on all principal matters relating to the government of their children. They both resolved to do the best possible, to give them a practical education, an education that would be of use; but mother being the better informed assumed the larger share in the direction of this education. She, to some extent, examined and encouraged the children even when in school, and kept the love of learning burning briskly all the time. About seven years after marriage she became an active Christian, joining the African M. E. Church in Gouldtown, October 12, 1846, under Rev. now Bishop A. W. Wayman; and not long after my father followed her in a profession of faith.