ANCESTRY
has often been printed both in Europe and America. Abraham later moved to the Skippack. His son, Isaac, was employed by the Potts families about their iron works at Pine Forge and Colebrookdale, and his grandson, Jacob, crossed the Schuylkill River to Chester County, where Samuel Nutt was making iron at Coventry in partnership with William Branson and Mordecai Lincoln, the great-great-grandfather of the President. Jacob Updegrove married Sarah, the daughter of Richard Butler. He and Butler were both wood-choppers and day laborers around these furnaces and forges where the industry which has created the prosperity of Pennsylvania began. There is a fatality in the preservation of pedigrees as in other things. For thirty years I can give the daily details of the inconspicuous and uneventful life of Richard Butler—what he did, what he ate and drank, what he wore. In this atmosphere, with such antecedents, my great-grandfather, Joseph Whitaker, raised his family. Each of his sons heard of the making of iron from his childhood and several of them, as they grew older, became iron-masters and made fortunes. From him came these physical tendencies: A weakness of the stomach, often running into dyspepsia, a certain rattle of the nerves and a vital tenacity which overcomes all attacks of disease and leads to length of life, ending in death from failure of the heart. Along with these tendencies came pride, firmness and a disposition to be masterful. It is a remarkable fact, observable down to the fifth generation, that individual descendants, who in youth show the traits of other forefathers, as they grow older, display the mental and physical characteristics of Joseph Whitaker. He wears out the stocks of lesser vital strength. While it is impossible to speak with confidence upon a subject so involved as that of inheritance, it is nevertheless my thought that while the convolutions of the brain which enabled me to grapple with a difficult problem of law while on the Bench, came by way of
