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SOURCE: Portrait and Biographical Album
        of Newaygo County, Mich.
        Chapman Brothers: 1884
        
                                PREFACE
                                _______
                                
     HAVING completed our labors in writing and compiling the PORTRAIT
  AND BIOGRAPHICAL ALBUM OF NEWAYGO COUNTY, we wish, in presenting it
  to its patrons, to speak briefly on 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 rec-
  ord of their early settlement, and to relate the story of their pro-
  gress. 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 precendent, 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 wild-
  erness are cut down by time. Not only is it of greatest importance
  to render history of pioneer time full 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 pre-
  cendents and principles that will be advanced and observed when the
  acts of soulless men will be forgotten, and their very names hidden 
  in th_____
     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.
     As one of the most interesting features of this work, we present
  the portraits of numerous representative citizens.  It has been our
  aim to have the prominent men of to-day, as well as the pioneers,
  represented in this department; and we congratulate ourselves on the
  uniformly high character of the gentlemen whose portraits we present.
  They are in the strictest sense representative men, and are selected
  from all the callings and professions worthy to be represented. There
  are others, it is true, who claim equal prominence with those presented,
  but of course it was impossible for us to give portraits of all the
  leading men and pioneers of the county.
     
                                          CHAPMAN BROTHERS
  CHICAGO, February, 1884.
  
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