no news to tell you," she once wrote her sister Lucy, "I think. Oh yes I have! Miss Eliz-h Eaton is like to be married at Road Island, ant you glad? Now I think of another piece of news. Joseph Woodruff's wife has got a fine son. One thing brings another, thought I had no news, Mrs. Sergent is like to have a child, pray what do you think of this? I know you will laugh. Lawyer Ogden's wife lately lay in with twins, two daughters and lost em both . . . I will tell you what Mrs. Cuming said about the Chince. She says the brown Chinces wash all out in a little time, Kitty's and Polly's did so and they were sorry they got such. . We had string beans till the middle of last week.

99

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But she was not always studying Latin, or thinking about brown "chinces," for on May 3, 1754, a daughter, Sarah, was born to her, and soon "by the way," Esther told Lucy, "people say Sally looks much like you." And on February 6, 1756, at the parsonage at Newark, she "was unexpectedly delivered of a son." She "had a fine time," she told Miss Prince, "altho it pleased God in infinite wisdome so to order it yt Mr. Burr was from home. I had a very quick and good time. A very good laying in. He rejoiced, the Reverend Jonathan Edwards wrote to his son-in-law, "in the smiles of Heaven on you and your family, and particularly in the late addition to your family, and the comfortable circumstances of both mother and child. For these favors we must bless God.. Give my love to your wife and to little Sally, and remember me in your Prayers."

This boy-born a son, grandson, great and greatgreat-grandson of ministers of the Gospel on both

sides of his house, so that, in the words of Mr. Gamaliel Bradford, "he might seem to have inherited an almost suffocating odor of sanctity"-was named Aaron Burr.

CHAPTER II

PRINCE TOWN

I

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ESTHER BURR, at the time of little Aaron's birth, recorded that she had a very quick and good time, but then she had "the canker very bad, and before I had recovered of that my little Aaron . . . was taken very sick, so yt for some days we did not expect his life," and in March she found that "he has never been so well since." And again, when he was about twenty months old, he nearly died of a violent fever, so that when he finally recovered she looked on the child "as one given to me from the dead," and "what obligations are we laid under," she exclaimed, "to bring up this child in a peculiar manner for God!" In other respects, in September, 1757, she thought him "a little, dirty, noisy boy. . . He begins to talk a little, is very sly and mischievous. He has more sprightliness than Sally, and most say he is handsomer, but not so good tempered. He is very resolute and requires a good governor to bring him to terms." As for Sally, she had "got pretty hearty again, is not much of a baby, affects to be thought a We are about sending her to school"

woman.

-she was not yet four-"but Mr. Burr is expecting yt she will prove a numbhead."

The father of this mature little girl and "dirty, noisy" little brother had been for some time, of course, President of the College of New Jersey. He had assisted, in 1746 at Elizabethtown, in its founding, and, upon the death of its first President, had succeeded to the office, the College having been removed to Newark.

In addition to the teaching of mathematics and the ancient languages, and, it seems, the calculating of eclipses, the President busied himself, and with satisfactory success, with the placing of the institution on a sound financial basis, and many of his letters bear witness to his constant concern in these affairs. "We shall want more money soon," he was always writing, and in 1755 he was apparently conducting a transatlantic endowment campaign.

"Dear and worthy Sir," he wrote in December of that year to Mr. Hogg, in Scotland, "your most obliging favor. . came safe to hand. . which I read with much gratification and pleasure. It brought us very agreeable news about the Scotland Collection, which has exceeded our expectations at least 300 pounds. We have begun a building at Princeton"-they were getting ready to move from Newark "which contains a Hall, Library and rooms to accommodate about an 100 students, though it will not any more of it be finished than is absolutely necessary at present, with a house for the President. We do everything in the plainest and cheapest manner, as far as is consistent with decency and convenience, having no superfluous ornaments. There