My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

MY RELATIVES AND ANCESTORS 9England were reunited, and lived together for twoyears in a cottage near Neath, in Glamorganshire.My brother John, at the age of fourteen or fifteen,was apprenticed, first to Mr. Martin and then to Mr.Webster, a Londer builder living in Albany Street,Regent Park, where he became a thorough joinerand carpenter. He afterwards worked for a time forCubitt and other large builders ; then, when he cameto live with me at Neath, he learnt surveying anda little architecture. When I went to the Amazon,he took a small dairy-farm at too high a rent, andnot making this pay, in 1849 he emigrated toCalifornia at the height of the first rush for gold,joined several mining camps, and was moderatelysuccessful. About five years later he came home,married Miss Webster, and returning to California,settled for some years at Columbia, a small miningtown in Tuolumne County. He afterwards removedto Stockton, where he practised as surveyor and waterengineer till his death in 1895.My younger brother, ^Herbert, was first placedwith a trunk maker in Regent Street, but not likingthis business, afterwards came to Neath and enteredthe pattern-shops of the Neath Ironworks. After hisbrother John went to California he came out to meat Para, and after a year spent on the Amazon as faras Barra on the Rio Negro, he returned to Para onhis way home, where he caught yellow fever, anddied in a few days at the early age of twenty-two.He was the only member of our family who had aconsiderable gift of poesy, and was probably morefitted for a literary career than for any mechanical orprofessional occupation.It will thus be seen that we were all of us verymuch thrown on our own resources to make our way