it was

ponding a view of human nature and the motives that govern men, perhaps because he, in a long life devoted to the study and observation of public affairs and political questions, had detected so much that was unworthy, selfish and ignoble, that his mental vision was obscured to the good that is in men. He was inclined to be a pessimist in his measure of men's characters and motives. He had a lofty ideal to which few can attain and indeed of which he himself fell short. But if we could all come as near it, taken for all in all, as he did, it would be cause for profound thankfulness. A large number of the citizens of Ionia attended his funeral.

MRS. ELIZABETH BELL.

Mrs. Elizabeth Bell, wife of Hon. A. F. Bell, who died at her home in Ionia on Sunday night, July 11, 1886, was born in Philadelphia, August 19, 1823. She was a daughter of Joshua and Rebecca (Coleman) Boyer. From an early age her home was in Reading, Pa., at which place she graduated at the age of fourteen from the Bethlehem seminary. Her parents came to Michigan with Gov. Porter and settled in Detroit. The children were sent back to Reading to live with an aunt to complete their education. Her mother died in Detroit in 1834. In 1838 Mr. Boyer removed to Portland, in Ionia county, where Elizabeth was married a year later, at the age of 16, to Alexander F. Bell, then a rising young lawyer. Mr. and Mrs. Bell lived in Lyons one year, and came to Ionia in 1840, where their home has been most of the time since. In 1856 she had a partial stroke of paralysis which affected one side, and from the effects of which she never entirely recovered. For many years she has suffered at times from its recurrence. For nearly a year she has been confined to the house, a great sufferer, helpless, but receiving the tender care of a devoted family. The last time she was out of the house was in August. At last she passed away peacefully and without pain, as though falling asleep. Mrs. Bell was a kind neighbor and friend, and by many acts of generosity and disinterested benevolence attracted to herself a large circle of friends. She had seven children, of whom five with her husband survive her. She was a member of the Episcopal church.

HON. OSMOND TOWER,

Hon. Osmond Tower died at his residence in Ionia at 11 o'clock Wednesday night, August 4, 1886. He was out riding during the day and no special premonition of speedy dissolution was felt by him so far as known. He retired at ten o'clock, and an hour later Mrs. Tower was awakened and found him sitting up in bed. This occasioned no surprise, as, for a year or more, he has been troubled with insomnia and difficulty of breathing,

superinduced by heart disease, and was in the habit of sitting up for relief. Mrs. Tower arose to give hin a spoonful of stimulant, but on returning to the bedside an instant later found him unconscious. She aroused the household, but he died almost instantly, and was beyond succor before anybody else could reach him. His death was quiet and painless. Physicians were summoned but the patient had passed away before their arrival.

By the death of Osmond Tower Ionia loses one more of that hardy race of pioneers who settled this county, and whose sturdy blows did so much to make the wilderness blossom as the rose. He was born at Cummington, Mass., Feb. 16, 1811. He was sixth in direct descent from John Tower, who emigrated in the year 1639, from Hingham, England, to Hingham, New England. He acquired a good education in the schools of his native town, learned the carpenter's trade and worked for ten dollars a month, teaching school in the winter until the age of twenty three, when he had accumulated $170 and decided to try his fortune in the West. Before leaving he married Sept. 1, 1834, Miss Martha Gallagher, of Albany, N. Y., adopted daughter of Dr. James Wade, brother of Hon. Ben. F. Wade. Dr. Wade had adopted her on the death of her mother soon after her arrival from Ireland, her native land. They arrived in Detroit in November. Mr. Tower worked at his trade in Detroit until stopped by cold weather, and removed to Farmington for the winter, where he engaged board for himself and wife at $1.50 a week. In the spring he returned to Detroit, and worked till fall, when he rode on horseback to Ionia, which consisted of two log houses. He went to the land office at Kalamazoo and located one hundred and twenty acres of land near Ionia. In the spring with his wife he removed to Ionia, arriving here March 25, 1836, with 75 cents in his pocket. He worked at his trade, securing work on the first school-house built in the valley. He soon built a house for himself which he sold, and built another, the old homestead on the site of the present insurance buildings, in which he lived thirty four years. The present residence, in which he died, was built in 1870. Aside from clearing his land, Mr. Tower worked at his trade until 1844, when he engaged in the manufacture of fanning mills, a business that he followed for twenty years. He was seven years a member of the firm of G. S. Cooper & Co.; six years with Tower & Chubb, foundrymen; for several years of the hardware firm of O. & O. S. Tower, and for many years the financial representative of the firm of Baker & Tower, makers of hot-air furnaces. In 1850 he went overland to California, returning by way of Panama in 1851.

In politics he was a whig until the organization of the republican party and was an active member of both parties. In recent years, however, he has taken comparatively little interest in politics. He attended the first meeting held

in Detroit to form the whig party; in 1840 he was elected county clerk, but in 1842 was defeated with the rest of the ticket. He was supervisor several terms and from 1858 to 1862 a member of the upper house in the state legislature. He was stockholder and treasurer of the Ionia & Lansing railroad company; director and president of the Ionia & Stanton railroad company, both of which were merged in the Detroit, Lansing & Northern. In March, 1863, President Lincoln appointed him U. S. marshal for the western district, a position he held until the Johnson régime in 1867, when he resigned. For most of the time since coming to Ionia he was officially connected with the public schools, and had held various other positions. He was at one time a prominent candidate for member of congress from this district, but was defeated for the nomination by the Hon. Thomas White Ferry.

Mr. Tower was a man of extraordinary will, strong prejudices, positive character and unyielding disposition. He was a most devoted husband, an indulgent, kind father, an exemplary citizen. He was pugnacious, however, and always ready to fight for his rights, or for what he believed to be his rights, and he was generally able to defend himself, right or wrong. In religion he was a Universalist, and positive in matters of dogma as he was in his political opinions. He was straightforward, direct, open and aggressive in everything. People always knew where to find him. It was his nature to take sides and avow his position fearlessly. The caustic letter he wrote when he resigned his position as marshal in 1867 was a type of the utterances of the man on all subjects. Its bold and defiant tone was characteristic. But the powerful will and extraordinary physical vigor had to succumb to the inexorable call of disease and death, and there is no doubt, that if he had a moment of consciousness to realize the presence of the grim monster, he met him with the same fortitude and intrepid front that he was able to present to the difficulties that beset him at every step of a long, laborious and useful life.

BENJAMIN R. TUPPER.

Benjamin R. Tupper, one of the pioneers of Ionia county, died on Friday at 5 p. m. and was buried on Sunday from his residence in Bonanza. He was born in Monroe county, N. Y., Nov. 30, 1818; died Aug. 27, 1886, aged 68 years, 9 months and 27 days. He had been a resident of Ionia county 46 years.

JEREMIAH STANNARD.

Died Nov. 25, 1886, at his residence in Boston, Ionia county, Jeremiah Stannard, in the 88th year of his age. Mr. Stannard was a pioneer of Boston,

having settled on the place where he died in 1837. Four families and three young men were the only ones who preceded him in the settlement. Mr. Stannard was elected one of the assessors at the first township meeting in 1838, and was elected treasurer in 1842. He has been an invalid for a long time, and has required much care and attention. He died at the house of his son, Hon. A. S. Stannard.

MRS. CORDELIA W. COCK.

Mrs. Cordelia W. Cook, widow of the late R. R. Cook, died at Otisco, Mich., on Sunday, Dec. 11, 1886.

Mrs. Cook was born in Sullivan, Madison county, N. Y., on the 2d day of Oct., 1811. Her father, Alvin Cowles, died on the 27th day of Sept., 1815, leaving her mother, Mrs. Roxana Cowles, a widow with two children, the subject of this notice and a sister. In the year 1817 her mother married Joseph Davis who, with her and her children, settled in the township of Chili, Monroe county, N. Y., where they lived until the year 1826, when they removed to Michigan and settled in the town of Avon, Oakland county. On the 2d day of Jan., 1834, she was married at the residence of her step-father to Rufus R. Cook, and in the spring of 1838 they removed to the township of Otisco, Ionia county, Mich., and settled upon a farm in a place now known as Cook's Corners, where they both resided until the time of their deaths. In June of the year 1870 Mrs. Cook united with the Baptist church of Otisco of which she remained an exemplary and consistent member up to the time of her death. Sister Cook was a woman of strong personalities and had a peculiar faculty of winning the affections of all with whom she came in contact. She was a devout christain and an efficient helper in every good work. Her charity was remarkable. She could never hear a person censured or their faults spoken of but she was always ready to bring forward every palliating circumstance that the case admitted of to tone down the asperity of the accuser. She died at the ripe age of seventy five years.

EDWARD STEVENSON.

Edward Stevenson was born in England nearly 68 years ago, and with his father and several brothers and sisters he settled in Ionia about 44 years ago, where he has chiefly resided. He became active in business life and one of the foremost among its honest, public spirited citizens. He was active and influential in all political movements and one of the first in Ionia to help organize the republican party. As the party became strong, and the democratic party grew weak under the storm of the prevailing anti-slavery agitation, internal conflicts arose within the republican ranks, mainly caused by

the distribution of official favors within the gift of the party. In these contests Mr. Stevenson always took a bold and aggressive position, either for or against the men of his choice. He fought a great many political battles, not only against the common enemy, but against those whom he deemed the unworthy pretenders within the republican ranks. These partisans, whom he regarded as the hay and stubble rubbish of party politics, he opposed openly and manfully. He was always a magnanimous political manager, never resorting to acrimonious personal invective to down a political opponent. He was a steadfast friend to those who had his confidence in all social and political stations in life, and was more anxious to grant a favor to a friend than to receive one. But his earthly labors are finished and he has gone to his reward. Whatever of good he has accomplished will long be remembered in his favor, while his mistakes, if any, will be set down as among the inevitable to the common humanity in the struggles and perplexities of human life, where none are perfect. He was an active business man, acquired considerable property, and was generous to a fault, and was honored with many distinguished official positions. He held the office of justice of the peace, postmaster of Ionia, and register of the land office at Ionia and at Reed City, and against his integrity and efficiency in his official or business career there never was a breath of suspicion. We have been intimately acquainted with him during the past 40 years, and have ever been proud to claim him as one of our most valued personal friends. As one of the pioneers of Ionia county, he will long live in the memory of a host of personal friends who enjoyed his familiar acquaintance during his busy and somewhat eventful life. He died at Stanton, Jan. 4, 1887.

MRS. JANE DINSMORE.

Mrs. Jane Dinsmore, widow of the late William Dinsmore, died at Portland on Saturday, Apr. 30, 1887, aged 75 years. Mrs. Dinsmore, with her husband, came to Portland from the state of New York in 1836, and consequently had resided here more than half a century. Their former home was in Caryville, near Batavia, N. Y., where Mrs. Dinsmore made a profession of religion and united with the M. E. church. When they came to Portland not a tree had been cut where the village now is, and for years after it was not unusual for deer and other game to pass among the trees standing where our residences now are. All old residents remember the enfeebling sickness that followed clearing the land, and from which no settler was exempt, nor can they ever forget that hunger from scarcity of provisions in the earlier years was not unknown. Mr. Dinsmore bought of the government 76 acres of land on section 34, at the head of the mill pond on the Looking Glass