ABSTRACT
The cautious bachelor, the Reverend Barnabas Smith, of the neighboring parish of North Witham, married the widow on the testimonial. Mrs. Smith left her three-year-old son to the care of his grandmother. The earliest part of Newton’s education was received in the common village schools of his vicinity. A maternal uncle, the Reverend William Ays-cough, seems to have been the first to recognize that Newton was something unusual. The Headmaster and Uncle Ayscough agreed that Newton was good enough for Cambridge, but the decisive die was thrown when Ayscough caught his nephew reading under a hedge when he was supposed to be helping a farmhand to do the marketing. A Cambridge graduate himself, Ayscough finally persuaded Newton’s mother to send her son to Cambridge instead of keeping him at home, as she had planned, to help her manage the farm on her return to Woolsthorpe after her husband’s death when Newton was fifteen.
