planters only but for their wives, "because in a new plantation it is not known whether man or woman be the most necessary."

This is the first positive and absolute recognition of woman's rights that ever took place in the new world. Measures were adopted, it will be seen, "toward the erecting of a university and college," and that the children of the Indians, "the most towardly boys in wit and graces of nature, should be brought up in the first elements of literature and sent from the college to the work of conversion" of the natives to the Christian religion. Penalties were appointed for idleness, gaming with dice or cards, and drunkenness, and excess in apparel was restrained by a tax.

A perpetual interest attaches to the proceedings of this the first elective. body that ever assembled in the western world, representing the people of Virginia and making laws for their government, more than a year before the Mayflower with the pilgrims left the harbor of Southampton, and while Virginia was still the only British colony on the continent of America. The functions of government were in some degree confounded, but the record of the proceedings justifies the opinion of Sir Edward Sandys that "the laws were very well and judiciously formed."

The volume of the Domestic Calendars for this reign opens with the state ceremonies consequent upon the recognition of the new sovereign. From

that time it takes its course through the events of the two succeeding years, illustrating day by day every incident as it occurred. In the case of many of the more important acts of public policy within this period, the state papers give us their entire history. They show in whose advice such acts originated; they develop their progress and exhibit their results.

The funeral of King James I., the reception of Queen Henrietta Maria, the plague which desolated the metropolis, the coronation, the loan of the Vanguard and other English ship to the French, the parliaments of 1625 and 1626, the naval expeditions of . those years, the loans which supplied the place of subsidies, the impeachment of Buckingham, the dismissal of the queen's French attendants, the quarrel between England and France, following hard upon that with Spain, the general disarming of the Roman Catholics, the ravages of the Dunkirkers on the eastern and those of the Sallee men on the western coasts of England -these are examples of the kind of subjects which will be found copiously illustrated in the State papers. The force and vividness with which these papers bring the English of that day before us is indeed marvelous. The condition of every department of the State, of the households of the king and queen, of the people, with many of their trades and occupations, and the feeling with which they regarded every incident which affected the honor or prosperity of the country

may be read with a distinctness which it is scarcely possible to transfuse into a treatise or history.

The king's instructions to Sir William Berkley, appointed governor of Virginia in August, 1641, must not be overlooked, nor the last letter of Charles I. to the government of Virginia in 1642, signifying his appreciation, in accordance with their desire, of their protest against a petition in their names to the house of commons for restoring the letters patent of the late company.

It is obvious that although the correspondence of this early period is not voluminous what it lacks in quantity is made up in the interest and importance of the papers preserved, and the same remark will hold good in respect to other plantations, the history of

which is illustrated and set forth in a most striking manner in the "Colonial Calendar," which has been published, covering that period. From 1642 to 1649 the correspondence is exceedingly scanty, the whole being comprised in four pages; the reason is obvious. The state paper office, as Mr. Bruce observes in the preface to his first volume of "Domestic Calendars to Charles I.," was the king's repository, and those who transmttted papers thither were his servants. When the quarrel broke out between the king and the parliament and Charles I. retired to York, to Oxford, and elsewhere, his papers were deposited in other places, and few found their way into the state paper office.

ELLIOTT ANTHONY.

ONE of the famous old homesteads of East Hartford, Connecticut, up to the time of its destruction by fire not many years since, was that which was known locally as the "Judson place." The Judsons were very early settlers of New England, and the family had given some distinguished names to American history more than a hundred years ago. The particular branch of the family located at East Hartford is, however, that with which we have to do in this connection, for the reason, that one of the noted pioneer citizens

of Chicago belonged to that branch. The old homestead, to which reference has been made, is said to have been in the possession of the family for something like a hundred and fifty years, and to have been the birth place of many eminently, respectable and worthy citizens, although they were. less widely known perhaps than some of their Massachusetts and Connecticut relatives of the same name.

Deacon John Judson, who lived in the old homestead at the beginning of the present century, was one of the

substantial farmers of the borough, and especially prominent locally as one of the pillars of the Congregational Church, of which he was a devoted member during the greater part of his life. He married a Miss Alford, also of Connecticut ancestry, and reared a family of children, of whom Dr. Edwin Judson, for nearly fifty years a familiar figure on the streets of Chicago, and one of the earliest practitioners of his profession to locate in the northwest

was one.

Dr. Judson was born in the house which had sheltered two or three generations of his ancestors, February 22, 1809. He grew to manhood on the old farm, performed his full share of the manual labor which fell to the average country youth of those days, attended the public schools of East Hartford a portion of each year, and rounded out his school days with a course of study at the academy, which gave him an "English education,' as it used to be called in New England.

Determining then to adopt a profession, he went to New Haven, Connecticut, where he began and completed the study of dentistry in the office of one of the prominent old time practitioners of that city.

Having received the license or certificate, issued at that time to young dentists to entitle them to practice, he turned his attention to professional work on his own account, and practiced in Connecticut several years with a fair degree of success.

Before this, however, he had visited some of the western States on a prospecting trip, and although he was not at that time sufficiently pleased with what he saw of the country to locate here, he was nevertheless impressed with the fact, that it was a country of vast possibilities, and one which in time might become wonderfully pro-. ductive, enough so to support towns and cities which would spring into prominent and prosperous existence. What he heard from this country from time to time after his first visit, convinced him that the era of western development had begun, and notwithstanding the fact that he was deeply attached to his New England home. and his early associations and environments, he determined to join the pioneers of the northwest, and to contribute his share to the progress and development of the country, while taking advantage of any opportunities which should present themselves for reaping golden harvests, as a result of thrift, enterprise, and judicious investment. His second trip to the "west" was therefore made with a well fixed object, and a thoroughly defined purpose in view, and this object and purpose was to select a location for permanent residence and the practice. of his profession. He arrived in Chicago in November, of the year 1840, and became a guest of the old Tremont House, of which Ira Couch, the famous pioneer landlord, was then the proprietor. Soon after he reached. the city, he established an office tem