Excerpt from Memoir of Ralph Haskins Ralph Haskins was born in Boston, April 5, 1779. He was the son of John and Hannah (Upham) Haskins, and the youngest of sixteen children. His father, John Haskins, was an old and much respected citizen of Boston, where he was born, March 12, 1729. In early life a cooper, in partnership with his step-father, Thomas Hake, he later became a distiller, and amassed a handsome property, principally in real estate. He was a man of distinguished integrity, a firm Episcopalian, and of conservative politics, although he seems to have sympathized with the Whigs in the early stages of the Revolutionary agitation. He remained in Boston during the siege, but, immediately after the evacuation of the town by the British, took the oath of allegiance to the State. Before the Revolution he was interested in military matters, and was lieutenant, and in 1772 captain, of a company in the Boston Regiment. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.