MY OWN LIFE.

IN

N compliance with a request of part, if not all of my family, to leave some memorials of my life, (which I should much more cheerfully undertake, had I spent it to better purposes, and more faithfully in the services of my God, and society both civil and sacred, to which I have long since considered myself inviolably to owe every part of it,) the only query I now have is, whether this will not be deemed useless, or whether it is more innocently spent than in the omission of it. But to begin my life, the scattered scraps of which, only memory at present can collect, having none of the remarks at hand, which I have heretofore incorrectly committed to paper, which would at least furnish me with dates, and without which I am at a loss begin.

My own life suggests progenitors, which were on my father's side, from France,-on my mother's, from Britain. My great grandfather, Francis Gano, brought my grandfather Stephen Gano, (when a child,) from Guernsey, in Jersey; it being a time of bloody persecution. Flight, or the relinquishment of the protestant religion, of which he was a professor, were the only means of preserving his life. He chose the former. One of his neighbours had been martyred in the day, and, in the evening, he was determined on as as the victim for the next day; information of which, he received in the dead of the night. He thereupon chartered a vessel, removed his family on board, and, in the morning, was out of sight of the harbour. Of what number his family consisted, I am not able to say. On his arrival in America, he settled in New-Rochelle, in the state of NewYork, and lived to the age of one hundred and three. My grandfather, Stephen Gano, married, I believe, Ann Walton, by whom he had many children, some of whom died in youth; those who lived to marry, were

Daniel, Francis, James, John, Lewis, Isaac, and three daughters, Sarah, Catharine, and Susannah, the last of whom lived to the age of eighty-seven. My father was the first of the beforementioned. He married Sarah Britton, daughter of Nathaniel Britton, of StatenIsland.

Her mother was a Stilwell, who made a profession of religion when about twenty years of age, and continued a member of the Baptist church till her death; her age was near an hundred.

My parents continued living on StatenIsland, till they had two children, Daniel, and Jane. They then removed to New-Jersey, and settled in Hopewell, Hunterdon county, where were born Stephen, Susannah, myself, Nathaniel, David, and Sarah. At the age of six years, I well remember being seized with a severe sickness in the spring, from which I did not recover till the fall; during which time, as I have since understood, the linen was procured in which to lay me out, supposing I was actually dead, as I lay a great part of the time perfectly senseless. When

I recovered, I was sent to a common country school, and had a strict religious education. My mother being a pious Baptist, which she publicly professed in her youth, and my father being a steady Presbyterian, took care that I was made well acquainted with, the Westminster confession of faith and catechism, which before my conversion, summoned my attention to preaching. If the sentiments I then heard disclosed, answered to the doctrines in which I was taught, they met my approbation; and if not, my displeasure was the consequence.

In early life I had some severe convictions of sins, conscious I must die and go to judgment; and that I must be renewed by grace, or perish as a sinner. But these convictions were transient and of short duration. As I advanced in years, I progressed in youthful vanity and sin. I became exceedingly anxious to excel my companions in work and amusements, and especially in their country frolics and dances. I was frequently admonished by my Parents for working to

excess, but much more frequently for my attachment to vanity. I cannot charge myself with irreverence to my parents; but when my pious mother would expostulate with me, I seized the opportunity to vindicate myself. One morning when I came into her presence, having been out late the night before, she fixed her eyes upon me, said not a word, and the pious parental tear stole down her cheek, which struck me with more conviction than I ever remembered to have felt before, which I could not eradicate by any reply, and which caused these reflections to sink deep in my mind: "Do my present follies cause so much pain to the most pious and most tender of parents, what must be the consequence, when they recoil on my own soul! Recoil they must, if not before, at least in the day of judgment; and there I must see this parent, whose tears now condole my case, smile an acquiescent consent in the dreadful sentence of eternal banishment from the righteous judge." These reflections caused many resolutions, which were shamefully broken for a time; yet a sense of my

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