Northwestern Bible School - Scroll Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

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[ 12 ] Greater than Pharaoh ' s beauty f Eternal the glory He giveth. Crumbling in rums today. That never shall pass away,

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A SKETC1HI «S F MY LHFE By W. B. Riley Ancestry and Birth I N THE Garden of Eden where my original ancestors dwelt, there arose a river and it parted and became into four heads,” and every son of Adam has four direct streams of blood coursing through his veins. On my father ' s side they were Irish and Scotch—Riley and Bridges; and on my mother ' s side, English and Dutch-—Jackson and Hayes. My father was Branson Radish Riley; my mother, Ruth Anna Jackson. It is not the province of this paper nor the purpose of its author to prove royal, or even aristocratic ancestry. So far as I know anything of the Riley family, the more remote ancestors were plain Irish farmers, and when my great-grandfather came to America he settled in Culpepper County, Virginia, whence my grandfather moved to Boone County, Kentucky, the county in which I ha d my bringing up until the twelfth year, and thereafter in Owen County, a place but forty miles distant from the spot of my father ' s birth. Professionally, the younger generation of Rileys were medical men. Two uncles, two first cousins, one double cousin, and my oldest brother, were all practitioners of the old, or allopathic school. My mother ' s people, particularly those on her father ' s side, played promi¬ nent part in early Pennsylvania, and the record of the Jackson house is written into the history of that and adjacent states, not only in leading educational and business enterprises such as Swarthmorc College, the Jackson-Sharp Ship Builders of Wilmington, Delaware, the Miller-Lock Company of Germantown and other enterprises, but also into its moral and ethical life, for some of my Jackson ancestors were prominent exponents of both abolition and prohibi¬ tion; and being Quakers, they were, of course, ardent advocates of nat ional and international peace. My own birth occurred in Greene County, Indiana, March 22nd, 1861- I have no memory of the humble house in which I spent the first year, or pos¬ sibly two, of personal existence. Owing to the intense feeling, amounting to unrestrained anger, daily brawls, and nightly quarrels and even fights, over the then-burning questions of slavery and state ' s rights, my father, who was a Democrat and slavery sympathizer, counted it more healthful as well as more restful to return to the Southern side of the Ohio River Consequently, my youth knew nothing of any other state than old Kentucky—the state of fast horses, beautiful women, burley tobacco, and eloquent orators—the Brecken- ridges, Henry Clay, and others. It will be remembered that my birth occurred at a time when the entire country was ablaze with debate. Whether that pre-natal influence had any effect upon the child ' s futur e we leave to the psychologists, and if they fail to render a decision, then to the psychoanalyses, This much Is certain, that in less than thirty days after my birth the Civil War broke out. Fort Sumpter was fired upon and the Confederate and Union armies gathered for one of the most frightful domestic wars the world had seen. The few incidents of the war such as would appeal to a baby ' s mind, I remember vividly; but the main result of the same in Impoverishing the South, doubtless added to the comparative poverty to which my father had been reduced by an attempted residence in Missouri, where a series of rainy seasons [14] r T , -7 ’ « f 4 - Al ' u