Robert Goodbody Journal

Dislike to school which flogging produces, made me worse. I think I must have also been very childish for a boy of my then age, as I often took great delight with my sisters in their baby-house.

In the fall of the year 1788 I had the smallpox naturally, one brother and two sisters. My brother Thomas took it first, when he was better my sister Sarah and I were down, lying in two beds in the same room. We were both very ill, I was covered over in all parts of my body with confluent pock, and was blind for many days, with a very sore throat. I don't think I ever was stout for many years after, and I lost my eyelashes, never having them good to this day. I well recollect old Betty Jackson, (Mary Thacker's mother; all of that family were very intimate with ours, and were a very good-natured family), but to return she was sitting by my bed-side, I was listening to her saying that I was grinding my teeth, and that it was a sign of dying. That did not alarm me, tho very probably that I might be really like to die, but I set to grind my teeth as long as I could. When I was getting better I had a great appetite, but having a very sore throat I could take nothing but flummery, the called sowings, which word calling for was never out of my mouth like a cry. I being blind, and well remember the first objects that attracted my sight when recovering it. My sister Ann had but a few spots, but made more noise crying than us all; she was then about two years old. All the rest of us were very badly marked, and I was a long time very red after it, and was annoyed by the boys calling me frosty face.

I ought to mention that I have a perfect recollection of my Great-grandmother Wayly mother to my Grandmother Pim,

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