Elias Hicks was born March 19, 1748, in Hempstead township, Queens
county, Long Island, New York State, near a village bearing the old
Scripture name of Jericho, (a mile or so north and east of the present
Hicksville, on the L.I. Railroad.) His father and mother were Friends,
of that class working with their own hands, and mark'd by neither
riches nor actual poverty. Elias as a child and youth had small
education from letters, but largely learn'd from Nature's schooling.
He grew up even in his ladhood a thorough gunner and fisherman. The
farm of his parents lay on the south or sea-shore side of Long Island,
(they had early removed from Jericho,) one of the best regions in the
world for wild fowl and for fishing. Elias became a good horseman,
too, and knew the animal well, riding races; also a singer fond of
"vain songs," as he afterwards calls them; a dancer, too, at the
country balls. When a boy of 13 he had gone to live with an elder
brother; and when about 17 he changed again and went as apprentice
to the carpenter's trade. The time of all this was before the
Revolutionary War, and the locality 30 to 40 miles from New York city.
My great-grandfather, Whitman, was often with Elias at these periods,
and at merry-makings and sleigh-rides in winter over "the plains."
How well I remember the region--the flat plains of the middle of Long
Island, as then, with their prairie-like vistas and grassy patches in
every direction, and the 'kill-calf' and herds of cattle and sheep.
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