I was born in the village of Huntingdon, on Long-Island, on the 11th day
of May, 1786. Joseph Atterley, my father, formerly of East Jersey, as it
was once called, had settled in this place about a year before, in
consequence of having married my mother, Alice Schermerhorn, the only
daughter of a snug Dutch farmer in the neighbourhood. By means of the
portion he received with my mother, together with his own earnings,
he was enabled to quit the life of a sailor, to which he had been bred,
and to enter into trade. After the death of his father-in-law, by whose
will he received a handsome accession to his property, he sought, in the
city of New-York, a theatre better suited to his enlarged capital. He
here engaged in foreign trade; and, partaking of the prosperity which
then attended American commerce, he gradually extended his business, and
finally embarked in our new branch of traffic to the East Indies and
China. He was now very generally respected, both for his wealth and fair
dealing; was several years a director in one of the insurance offices;
was president of the society for relieving the widows and orphans of
distressed seamen; and, it is said, might have been chosen alderman,
if he had not refused, on the ground that he did not think himself
qualified.

My father was not one of those who set little value on book learning,
from their own consciousness of not possessing it: on the contrary, he
would often remark, that as he felt the want of a liberal education
himself, he was determined to bestow one on me. I was accordingly, at
an early age, put to a grammar school of good repute in my native village,
the master of which, I believe, is now a member of Congress; and, at the
age of seventeen, was sent to Princeton, to prepare myself for some
profession. During my third year at that place, in one of my excursions
to Philadelphia, and for which I was always inventing pretexts, I became