Primary Colours.--The Artist's first Pencils.--The Present of a Box of
Colours and Engravings.--His first Painting.

Benjamin West, the subject of the following Memoirs, was the youngest son
of John West and Sarah Pearson, and was born near Springfield, in Chester
County, in the State of Pennsylvania, on the 10th of October, 1738.

The branch of the West family, to which he belongs, has been traced in an
unbroken series to the Lord Delawarre, who distinguished himself in the
great wars of King Edward the Third, and particularly at the battle of
Cressy, under the immediate command of the Black Prince. In the reign of
Richard the Second, the ancestors of Mr. West settled at Long Crandon in
Buckinghamshire. About the year 1667 they embraced the tenets of the
Quakers; and Colonel James West, the friend and companion in arms of the
celebrated Hampden, is said to have been the first proselyte of the
family. In 1699 they emigrated to America.

Thomas Pearson, the maternal grandfather of the Artist, was the
confidential friend of William Penn, and accompanied him to America. On
their first landing, the venerable Founder of the State of Pennsylvania
said to him, "Providence has brought us safely hither; thou hast been the
companion of my perils, what wilt thou that I should call this place?" Mr,
Pearson replied, that "since he had honoured him so far as to desire him
to give that part of the country a name, he would, in remembrance of his
native City, call it Chester." The exact spot where these patriarchs of
the new world first landed, is still pointed out with reverence by the
inhabitants. Mr. Pearson built a house and formed a plantation in the
neighbourhood, which he called Springfield, in consequence of discovering
a large spring of water in the first field cleared for cultivation; and it
was near this place that Benjamin West was born.