Elihu Ashley of Deerfield, Massachusetts, was the second son of Reverend Jonathan Ashley, the town’s second minister. Elihu grew up on the north end of Deerfield’s main street, where his family had its house and farm. He attended Hatfield Academy (his older brother, Jonathan, was the only one to go to Yale College like their father) and then returned to Deerfield to study medicine with Dr. Thomas Williams (1718-1775). In 1774 and 1775 he practiced medicine in Worthington, Massachusetts. When Dr. Williams died, Elihu married his daughter, Mary Cook (Polly) Williams, and moved into the Williams house to take over the doctor’s practice and help with the younger members of Thomas and Esther Williams’s family. When his own father died in 1780, Elihu and Polly and their one child moved into the Ashley house to care for his widowed mother. Elihu kept a detailed journal in the years 1773 to 1775, chronicling his social life, his work, and the coming of the American Revolution (1775-1783).