Mother's maiden name was Melinda Light. Her mother died when she was quite young. She and father were married when she was about nineteen years old. She took one of her youngest brothers to live with her, and she acted more the part of a mother than a sister to him. She sent him to school and gave him a good education. His name was Allen Light and he was thoroughly qualified to officiate in the capacity of a pedagogue. He taught a number of terms, prudently saved his wages and bought father's little farm, before we left the state of New York. He married a young woman, who had some capital of her own, before we came away, and they settled on father's old place, and lived there when we came to Michigan. For this uncle I did some of my first working out, mostly picking up stone; he gave me a shilling a day. I worked for him until I had, what I thought was quite a purse of money and I brought some of it to Michigan. As father lived in a hired house I had my own time, during my vacations when I was not going to school. One man was quite displeased with me, because I refused to work for him for sixpence a day. Another man for whom I did work in haying, and spread hay after two or three mowers and raked after, never paid me anything. I supposed he would give me eighteen cents or two shillings a day. I worked for him four days; he was a rich man at that time. I wanted father to ask him for it for me, but he said if the man wasn't a mind to pay it let him go. Thirty years afterward, when I was there, I met the same man, he was riding a horse down a hill as we were going up. I asked my cousin who he was and when he told me I remembered the work I had done for him. I inquired, of my cousin, about his circumstances; he said that he used to be a rich man, but that he had lost his property and was poor. I am sure, I didn't feel much like sympathizing with him. Uncle Allen wrote to mother very often after she came to Michigan. He told her how much he missed her, that she had been a mother to him. He said the doors of the house, as he turned them on their hinges, seemed to mourn her absence. It was this brother and his family that we wanted to see the most. We heard from him often and learned that he had been successful in business. He bought two farms, joining the one he bought of father, and one about a mile off and paid for them, they were farms which father and mother knew very well. We learned, from others, that he was a wealthy, prominent and influential man, in that old country. Fickle fortune had smiled on him and he had taken what she offered to give. In the fall we were going to see them. The war of the rebellion had commenced, 1861, when we got ready to go and see them. Some three or four years before this I hired three or four colored men, who came from Canada, to work for me. The right name of one of them, I think I never knew, it was necessary for him to keep it to himself. Campbell and Obadiah were the names of the other two.