The story of Jacobus T. Vandemark, born in Ulster County, New York. When only a few years old, Vandemark's widowed mother took a second husband, a rascally patent medicine salesman who abused both his wife and her son. He put the lad to work in a cotton mill at the age of six until the boy ran away to work on the Erie Canal under the command of a rough but good hearted canal boat captain.
