By JAMES W. CLARKE, A.M.

[Editor of the Boston Traveller].


The descendants of William Ames, the Puritan, who settled in Braintree,
are a representative New England family. Their history forms an
honorable part of the history of Massachusetts, and fitly illustrates in
its outlines the social and material advancement of the people from the
poverty and hardships of the early Colonial days to the wealth and
culture of the present. In the early days of the Colony they were poor,
as were their neighbors of other names, but they honored toil and
believed in the dignity of honest labor. Industry was with them coupled
with thrift. They recognized their duty to the State and gave it such
service as she demanded, whether it were honest judgment in the jury
box, the town meeting and the General Court, or bearing arms against the
Indian marauder, and the foreign foe. State and Church were virtually
one in these primitive times, and such services as were delegated to
individuals by church, by school districts, or by the town, were
accepted by the members of this family as duties to be unostentatiously
performed, rather than as bringing with their performance either honor
or emolument. With their thrift they coupled temperance. They labored
subduing the forests, on the clearing and at the forge. Artisans, as
well as agriculturists, were needed; and they became skilled artisans.
Muskets were as indispensable to these pioneers as hoes or spades; and
so they made guns, then farming tools. They made shovels first for their
neighbors, then for their township, then for their State and country. As
their state advanced they kept pace with it. They found an outlet for
the products of their skill at a neighboring seaport, and through this