Although not a native of the county, he has been so completely a part of its social and literary life for more than a generation, that he may justly be regarded as one of its representative men.

Henry Barton Dawson wa.sborn atGosberton,in Lincolnshire, about ten miles southwest of Boston, England, on Friday, June S, 1821. His father, Al>raham Dawson, was born in July, 1795, at Wisbeach, in the neighboring county of Cambridge, where his grandfather, originally of LincoliLshire, was then residing. His father'.>5 mother, a Miss Culy, belonged to a family of French Huguenots, who lived on a farm called Guyhirn, near Wisbeach. His mother was Mary Barton, second daughter of John Barton, of the parish of Bicker, five miles north of Gosberton. Mr. Barton was a respectable farmer. His daughter, Mary, married Abraham Dawson, May 15, 1820.

Henry Barton Dawson was their only son and the eldest of six children. He received his first instruction from a school-mistress, who found him an apt and ready pupil. At nine years of age, having in the meantime had the care of the village school-master, he attended, for a year, the noted school of Mr. Moses of Donnington. The last school in his native county,

at which he was taught, was kept by Mr. Greenfield, a pupil of Mr. Moses, who carried him through a course of practical surveying.

In the spring of 1834 his parents, with their fiimily, removed from England to the United States. They landed at New York on the 9th of June in the same year. His father's chief reason for emigrating was his dissatisfaction with the British government. AtManhattanville, eight miles from New York, he established himself as a gardener, an occupation which he continued to pursue until a short time before his death, in January, 1872.