mind, sound judgment, and eager after information, he read much
and improved himself, insomuch that he was chosen, with Joshua Fry,
professor of Mathematics in William and Mary college, to continue the
boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina, which had been begun
by Colonel Byrd; and was afterwards employed with the same Mr. Fry, to
make the first map of Virginia which had ever been made, that of Captain
Smith being merely a conjectural sketch. They possessed excellent
materials for so much of the country as is below the Blue Ridge; little
being then known beyond that Ridge. He was the third or fourth settler,
about the year 1737, of the part of the country in which I live. He died
August 17th, 1757, leaving my mother a widow, who lived till 1776, with
six daughters and two sons, myself the elder. To my younger brother
he left his estate on James river, called Snowden, after the supposed
birth-place of the family: to myself, the lands on which I was born and
live. He placed me at the English school at five years of age; and at
the Latin at nine, where I continued until his death. My teacher, Mr.
Douglas, a clergyman from Scotland, with the rudiments of the Latin and
Greek languages, taught me the French; and on the death of my father, I
went to the Reverend Mr. Maury, a correct classical scholar, with whom
I continued two years; and then, to wit, in the spring of 1760, went to
William and Mary college, where I continued two years. It was my great
good fortune, and what probably fixed the destinies of my life, that
Dr. William Small of Scotland was then professor of Mathematics, a man
profound in most of the useful branches of science, with a happy talent
of communication, correct and gentlemanly manners, and an enlarged and
liberal mind. He, most happily for me, became soon attached to me, and
made me his daily companion when not engaged in the school; and from his
conversation I got my first views of the expansion of science, and
of the system of things in which we are placed. Fortunately, the
philosophical chair became vacant soon after my arrival at college, and