laws of nature have not permitted me to escape from the influence of
this common rule. The earliest accounts I possess of my progenitors
represent them as a goodly growth of the Linum Usitatissimum, divided
into a thousand cotemporaneous plants, singularly well conditioned, and
remarkable for an equality that renders the production valuable. In this
particular, then, I may be said to enjoy a precedency over the
Bourbons, themselves, who now govern no less than four different
states of Europe, and who have sat on thrones these thousand years.

{Linum Usitatissimum = Linum usitatissimum (Cooper's capitalization
varies) is the botanical name for the variety of flax from which linen is
made}

While our family has followed the general human law in the matter just
mentioned, it forms a marked exception to the rule that so absolutely
controls all of white blood, on this continent, in what relates to
immigration and territorial origin. When the American enters on the
history of his ancestors, he is driven, after some ten or twelve
generations at most, to seek refuge in a country in Europe; whereas
exactly the reverse is the case with us, our most remote extraction being
American, while our more recent construction and education have taken
place in Europe. When I speak of the "earliest accounts I possess of my
progenitors," authentic information is meant only; for, like other races,
we have certain dark legends that might possibly carry us back again to
the old world in quest of our estates and privileges. But, in writing this
history, it has been my determination from the first, to record nothing
but settled truths, and to reject everything in the shape of vague report
or unauthenticated anecdote. Under these limitations, I have ever
considered my family as American by origin, European by emigration,
and restored to its paternal soil by the mutations and calculations of