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AT THE FORKS OF THE GRAND five years near Attleboro. But his son, Joseph Jr. (1722-1784) felt the family urge to push on to a new frontier. He trekked north west for 250 miles through some of the beautiful valleys and passes of the Green Mountains until he reached the foot of their western slope. There, in Leicester, about twelve miles from Lake Champlain, he "purchased [according to Hiram Capron] a beautiful farm extending to the banks of the Otter River, with large flats of the richest soil which were overflowed each spring, leaving a deposit of washings from the mountains on the land, which yielded immense crops of the finest timothy hay." Joseph Jr. married twice and begat fifteen children. The oldest surviving son of Joseph Capron Jr. (four brothers "died young") was another Captain Joseph Capron (I760-1827), who seems to have fought against the British in the wars of the American Revolution, probably as one of Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys. When the Americans won their independence, he returned to his father's farm, married twice, and became the father of six boys and four girls. His fourth son, Hiram, was the founder of Paris. Hiram Capron attended the town school at Brandon. There he particularly distinguished himself in penmanship: when he concen- trated, he could write an excellent hand. During his school days, he worked on his father's farm, fished in the Otter River, and hunted in the dense woods that gave the Green Mountains their name. He loved the Green Mountains. He saw them smiling in the warm sunshine, drowsing in the golden twilight, hiding their heads in the mist and rain, and, when the snows of winter lay heavy upon them, rising white and cold above the valley. Their image and spirit were to remain with him always. They ied him to enjoy Wordsworth's poetry and to quote lines such as the following: These beauteous forms . . . I have owed to them In hours of weariness, sensations sweet Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration. And they inspired him, when he was a young man, to write verses of his own; and later, to write prose-descriptions of the valleys of the Nith and the Grand, for example: Looking up the Grand . . . the prospect is very pleasing. The river with its verdant islands, the winding waters, the bridges and resi- dences on the hill . . . their heights covered with young oaks in all the glory of autumnal livery, together combine to form a panorama of more than ordinary beauty. It is a spot, the placid beauty of which can scarcely be excelled - bounded on two sides by bold uplands, clad with forest verdure; the river flowing gently past on the other side, shut in by precipi- tous banks covered with luxurious vegetation, and the town seen uncertainly in the distance on the other. The river here, too, flows 26