with whom this book is concerned. The grandfather Elihu Root married
Achsa Pomeroy, his second cousin once removed, and thus brought
her family strain a second time into his grandson's heritage. He was
evidently one of those hardy and industrious farmers who made an
independent and sufficient living in a frontier community by his own
labor and that of the members of his family. His son Oren, the second
of ten children who entered the world under the Root roof at regular
two-year intervals from 1801 to 1819, recalled:

We had abundance of food and clothing; we raised our own
wheat and corn, which were ground into flour and meal at a
neighboring mill for a share of the grain; we raised all the beef
and pork and vegetables that we required; we raised sheep and
sheared them, and carded and spun and wove the cloth for our
winter clothing; we raised flax and from it made our own linen;
we dipped our own candles, which afforded sufficient artificial
light for a life in which it was the rule to rise with daylight and
go to bed when it was dark; we had milk from our own cows, eggs
from our own fowls and abundant firewood from our own forest.
We bad everything we needed except money and we had little
need for that; the chief occasion for its use was to pay the small
taxes which were required each year. There was little money in
the community and it was sometimes hard to get enough to meet
the taxes. ¹

Perhaps it was to obtain the money needed for taxes that Elihu Root
secured in 1811 a license "to keep an Inn or Tavern, in the House
wherein he now resides." His house was advantageously situated on
the main road westward to the Genesee country and a considerable
stream of people would have seen in passing the sign board which is
still preserved: "E. Root Inn--1816." It is known also of this Elihu
Root that Governor George Clinton commissioned him as a lieuten-
ant in the militia in 1803 and that he served in the infantry during
the War of 1812.

At home and across the little brook at his uncle's house, Oren Root
had plenty of playmates. On these two farms there were seventeen
Root children being "reared in customs, prejudices and manners of
thought just as English as if their ancestors had never left Northamp-

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