Excerpt from Portrait and Biographical Album of Newayco County, Mich: Containing Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens of the County

Aving completed our labors in writing and compiling the portrait and biographical\album or newaygo county, we wish, in presenting it to its patrons, to speak briefly of the importance of local works of this nature. It is certainly the duty of the present to commemorate the past, to perpetuate the names of the pioneers, to furnish a record of their early settlement, and to relate the story of their progress. The civilization of our day, the enlightenment of the age, and this solemn duty which men of the present time owe to their ancestors, to themselves and to their posterity, demand that a record of their lives and deeds should be made. In local history is found a power to instruct man by precedent, to enliven the mental faculties, and to waft down the river of time a safe vessel in which the names and actions of the people who contributed to raise this region from its primitive state may be preserved. Surely and rapidly the. Noble men who in their prime entered the wild forests of Newaygo and claimed the virgin soil as their heritage, are passing to their graves. The number remaining who can relate the history of the first days of settlement is becoming small indeed, so that an actual necessity exists for the collection and preservation of historical matter without delay, before the settlers of the wilderness are cut down by time. Not only is it of the greatest importance to render history of pioneer time fall and accurate; but it -is also essential that the history of the county, from its settlement to the present day, should be treated through its various phases, so that a record, complete and impartial, may be handed down to the future. The present, the age of progress, is reviewed, standing out in bold relief over the quiet, unostentatious olden times; it is a brilliant record, which is destined to live in the future; the good works of men, their magnificent enterprises, their lives, whether commercial or military, do not sink into oblivion, but, on the contrary, grow brighter with age, and contribute to build up a record which carries with it precedents and principles that will be advanced and bbserved when the acts of soulless men will be forgotten, and their very names hidden in t'r In the preparation of the personal sketches contained in this volume, unusual care and pains were taken to have them accurate, even in the smallest detail. Indeed, nothing was passed lightly over or treated indifferently in the entire book, and we flatter ourselves that it is one of the most accurate works of its nature ever published.

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