九世祖吴芹早逝，其妻叶氏（1156-1214）出阁两年而寡，尽卖嫁妆，兴治田产，夙兴夜寐，独养一岁孤男。经营数载，家业饶裕。叶氏常以行善教子。晚岁，造佛像，建桥梁，施棺椁，一无所吝。其子吴渭体恤母心，建层楼可望十里，但见雪中有不举火者，即暗中令人以粟遗之。有客赠之诗曰：“雪暗何人遗积粟，月明有客步康衢。”
The ninth ancestor Wu Qin died prematurely, leaving his wife, a lady named Ye (1156-1214), a widow after only two years of marriage. The widow had to sell her dowry and work day and night to raise alone their fatherless one-year- old son. After managing the household alone for several difficult years, the family gradually became rich. Despite her wealth and abundant property, the mother always taught her son to be compassionate and charitable. In her old age, she generously spent money commissioning statues of the Buddha, building bridges and donating coffins to those families which couldn’t afford a burial. Her son Wu Wei understood his mother’s compassion and built a tower, on which he could see as far as ten miles. If he noticed a household had no cooking smoke even on a snowy day, he would send the poor family a bag of millet secretly. Someone praised his kindness with this poem: “Who quietly left millet on a dark snowy night? We only see someone walking on the high road under the bright moonlight.”