AUTHOR'S PREFACE HERE are many intelligent and active persons who have given the study of history but little, if any, serious thought, who fail to see anything of practical or tangible value in it. Estimated by the standard of dollars and cents, they are not far from correct. This age is a commercial one, and only subjects of commercial value command serious attention. It seems wasteful to spend time rummaging among the musty things of the past and reviewing the fossilized doings of departed years, when the important activities of the strenuous present seem to demand every moment of fleeing time. To all such the dead past has its buried dead, and they do not discern any material or present benefit in the resurrection of their faded memories, or in the lesson of their trials and achievements. But they fail to note that all life and achievement is evolution, that present wisdom comes from past experience, and that present commercial prosperity has only come from past exertion and suffering. The necrology of the past is the foundation of the present. The deeds and motives of the men and communities that have gone before have been instrumental in shaping the destinies and guiding the upbuilding of states and empires. Respect for and study of ancestry are factors in future greatness. It is these that treat of the origin and structure of political institutions, the steady evolution of domestic, economic and industrial arts, the growth and development of public morals and individual conduct, and the value of personal character and effort to future generations. It proves and analyzes the impulses and actions of bygone man, and traces in his progress his failures and successes, his progress and advancement, and presents the possibilities of the future. The development of a new country was at once a task and a privilege. It required great courage, sacrifice and privation. Compare the present condition of this people with what it was in 1830. From a trackless wilderness it has come to be a center of prosperity and civilization, with millions of wealth, with systems of interlacing railways, grand educational institutions, marvelous industries, and immense agricultural productions. Can any thinking person be entirely insensible to the fascina tion of that study which discloses the incentives, the hopes, aspirations and heroic efforts of the early pioneers, who here vanquished the savages and subdued the asperities of nature; who toiled and suffered to reclaim the wilderness and make it fruitful; who developed the hidden wealth of the prairies and hills, and whose persistent, well-directed labors wrought from its generous soil the evolution of this great state? To perpetuate the story of those people, and rescue from oblivion their trials and sacrifices when opening this region to the light of civilization; to trace and record the social, political and industrial progress of the state from its first inception; to collect, systematize and preserve that knowledge for future generations, and place at hand for the future historian the most trustworthy material for his work, is the function of the local historian. That it is but poorly done, we admit; that there are many things omitted, is candidly admitted. With a sincere purpose to preserve facts and personal memoirs that are deserving of preservation, and illustrate the reality of pioneer life, and unite the present to the past, is the author's apology for this work. THE AUTHOR. |