page 15 the close of the Pequod war in New England, at which time the Indians were hostile in the Dutch colony; they were married in either New Amsterdam or Gravesend (probably the latter) between 1640 and 1644; lived at Gravesend, Long Island,(4) where Richard Stout was a prominent land-owner as late as 1657; in 1667 they moved across the Lower Bay into Monmouth county, New Jersey, at which time two of their children were of age and three were yet unborn. We are informed that Penelope Stout had ten children--seven sons and three daughters--that she lived to be 110 years old, and that before dying "she saw her offspring multiplied into 502 in 88 years." The date of her death is given in the year 1712. The "88 years" of her offspring are reckoned from 1624, the year of her supposed marriage, and the years of her life from the year of her supposed birth in 1602. Counting from the latter date, she would have been sixty-seven years old when her son David was born in 1669. She would have been truly a wonderful woman to have borne children for a period of forty-five years after her marriage. No medical man, it is safe to say, ever knew of such a case. Let twenty years, however, be deducted from her supposed age, and she would have been forty- (4)It is recorded that on "October 13th, 1643, Richard Aestin, Ambrose Love and Richard Stout made declaration that the crew of the Seven Stars and of the Privateer, landed at the farm of Anthony Jansen, of Salee, in the Bay, and took off 200 pumpkins, and would have carried away a lot of hogs from Coney Island had they not learned that they belonged to Lady Moody." (Calendar of New York Historical Manuscript.) page 16 seven years old when David was born, and ninety when she died; in which case her remarkable achievement in child-bearing would no longer be a cause for wonderment. Richard Stout was the son of John Stout, of Nottinghamshire, England. It is related of him that he left home because of parental interference in an affair of love with a young woman who was considered below him in the social scale. He enlisted on a man-of-war, where he served seven years, receiving his discharge at New Amsterdam, where his vessel happened to be when his term of enlistment expired. On the authority of Salter (than whom it is claimed no man was better informed in the local history of Monmouth county), Richard Stout was the most prominent of the founders of the new colony at Middletown. In the winter of 1667 he was appointed to assist in laying out the lots; in 1669 he was one of the so-called overseers. He took an active interest in the public affairs of the new settlement, and his name is frequently mentioned in the annals of Freehold. Such mental and physical activity would hardly have existed in a man who was born in 1584. Even if he were married in 1644, when in his fortieth year, he would have been 100 years old between 1703 and 1705, dates of signing and probating his will. But no claim has been made in any account of him that he attained great longevity. It may therefore be conceded that the figures relating to his age are as unreliable as are those relating to the age of his wife. There is always a tendency to exaggerate the age of o! ld persons. Whew, that's a lot of typing!