Excerpt from The Blaine Family: James Blaine, Emigrant and His Children, Ephraim, Alexander, William, Eleanor

N preparing this narrative of James Blaine, and more particularly of his son, Colonel Ephraim Blaine, I have car ried out a long-cherished desire to bring together in concise and permanent form, fragments of family history, gathered from many sources.

The pioneer days of the family in America are very accur ately described in Gail Hamilton's life of James G. Blaine, from which, through the courtesy of Funk Wagnalls Com pany, publishers, I have drawn freely. In addition, it has been my pleasure to make a diligent search of public records, to con sult authorities and to seek information through personal inter views and through correspondence with the older living mem bers of the family, several of whom have but recently passed away. The results of these efforts have been written into the narrative. That it is brief, that it is incomplete, must always be a matter of regret. Our ancestors, many of them at least, were careless or indifferent about preserving the records and memorials of their families, and of the incidents of their daily lives. Perhaps their vision was not broad enough to reach into the distant future and picture the interest with which coming generations would turn to them as the pioneers of the glorious America of today. Their interest was in their own time, in the strenuous life and daily duties that brought them prosperity and happiness and peace, in training their children for usefulness and service, and in worshipping God in a freedom of spirit they had not known in the land from whence they came.

The passing years have scattered the family far and wide; many have disappeared in the mists of time, and with them, no doubt, have been lost documents and manuscripts that we would count of great value. A disastrous and irreparable loss, was the almost criminal destruction of Ephraim Blaine's public documents, manuscripts and private papers stored, after hisdeath, in the house of his son Robert. The servants found them convenient for lighting the fires in the great mansion, and empty barrels and boxes were the mute witnesses of the havoc that had been wrought.

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