The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1880-08-05
THE PEG TANKARD.

drawers at the bottom. " There, my
dear, is a treasure for your
1t was a dark, rainy June forenoon.
We were in the low garnet of the old
farmhouse, and was delighting my
self by searching about among the
slowed away family relics. Each had
a history distinguished by time and was
made pathetic by association with dear
ones who had passed beyond. glanced
up into my plump relatives beaming
face at sound of her CHEEKY voice, which
came to my ears in pleasing harmony
with the foot wheep' which | was
rapidly turning, and the pattering rain
upon the pine shingles Just above my
head. As she stood there in straight
backed splint bottomed chair directly
between me and the south gable win
dow, with one arm akimbO and the
other extended as she handed down a
heavy pewter tankard for my inspec-
ton, she looked not unlike a cheerful
huge tankard herself.
"You can see,'' she chatted on, "that
it is real old English tankard. For
all its repeated scourings the imprint of
the crown and the date, 1910, Just
two hundred years before you were
born, my dear-are still plainly to be
seen. Lift the lid, pull out the papers
and look at the pegs which mark the
inside into equal sections so that they
who drank from it should share and
share alike"
l laughed, shifted, to see if perchance
the flavor of the ancient d" home
brewed,' still remained, and asked:
"a hav IL
of ancestral estates in merry England?"
BETTER than that" replied the dear
woman with great dignity; "better than
that, my child. They are proof positive
that your ancestors were patriots, and
that your great-grandmother was born
in Concord, Massachusetts. That little
manuscript book is a bit of diary kept
by my grandmother in 1775 and 1776.
l came across it not long since in
hidden till of this old chest and drawers.
Many of the facts related and the peo-
pie mentioned l well remember my
grandmother referring to in her enter
tanning talk about her girlhood days in
old Concord. You will find the peg
tankard more thar once referred to as
you read along. They seemed to me to
belong together, so put the papers in
to the tankard, which grandmother
father, Jacob Lawton, brought from
England, and which grandmother gave
to me when was married. Having no
daughter of my own | slowed them
away here for you. Sit down here by
the window in Annie Lawton's arm
chair and read the quaint old chronicle
through. There is a story running
through it which seems to me to be
worth printing"
After reading the diary, | heartily
concurred in that opinion and there
fore | transcribe such bits as have now
historical interest and value and thus
allow sweet Annie Lawton, after all
these years, to tell her own story in her
own way.
The diary was divided by states into
years and months. The entries were
separated by a -, sometimes it
seemed that two or three were made in
a day; again day, or perchance a week
might elapse in which there was moth
ing written. 1t was a sweet, truthful
and fair record of a girlish life, and the
simple earnest patriotism which breathed
upon every page quickened my pulses
and brought the tears unbidden to my
eyes. This is the first entry, made
November, IVA:
The boys the mere lads, | mean,
have been choosing officers for their
militia company and we girls who are
interested although l suppose we can
not be soldiers) have been sitting upon
the raspberry wall at the foot of our
garden overlooking the meadow to see
the result. 1t seems that Jeremiah
Gilman. who has been the captain all
along, is a tory and he wishes the lads
to wear their red flannel shirts as out
side garments when they train, so as %
look as much like the red-coats on BOs-
ton Neck as possible. When he gave
this order yesterday, the young patriots
rebelled at once, stacked their wooden
guns and voted to choose new captain.
Our Jonas was the one denominated.
Only the original members of the COM
pany could vote, but the great rabble
of village boys who had 1locked to the
meadow with an expressed wish to Join
the company, after the officers were
chosen, had a right to show their pref
erence by walking together and stand
inc in q body beside the captain they
wished to support. When the sign was
given, these BOYS who had been leaning
against the wall talking to us girls, all
marched hotly across and formed them
selves into a hollow square about our
Jonas. When these pedarians had
thus shown their preference, the orig
inal company and the lesser officers also
walked across, thus leaving the young
tory captain entirely by himself, lean
ING his back up against stout young
hickory tree, grim, sullen and silent.
just then my uncle Jasper came
along with Samuel Adams, who has
been up from Boston again to-day.
These two paused to look at
the lads who were shouting and
swinging their caps. Samuel Adams,
for all his habitual great dignity
whirled his hat in the air, also, to the
delight of us all. At that, poor Jere-
miah Gilman turned and seized the
stout young hickory, bent it to the
gound and attempted to break or twist
It off at the root.
His discontinue and this passionate
way of showing it amused the two men
greatly, and Samuel Adams said, 1.-THE
royalists will find the spirit they have
aroused in the people harder to uproot
than that hickory sapling." And then,
turning to us girls, he said: a. l hope
there are some among you who viii
chronicle the events of these days. A
simple journal, faithfully written now,
will be of value in the years to come"
hardly knew what he meant, but
suppose the country is on the eve of