HISTORY OF KANE COUNTY.
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CHAPTER XVIII.
CITIZENS OP KANE COUNTY.
The verdict of mankind has awarded to the Muse of History the highest place among the classic Nine. The extent of her office, however, appears to be, by many minds, but imperfectly understood. The task of the historian is comprehensive and exacting. True, History reaches beyond the doings of court or camp, beyond the issue of battles or the effects of treaties, and records the trials and the triumphs, the failures and the successes of the men who make history. It is but an imperfect conception of the philosophy of events that fails to accord to portraiture and biography its rightful position as a part-and no unimportant part-of historical narrative. Behind and beneath the activities of outward life the motive power lies out of sight, just as the furnace fires that work the piston and keep the ponderous screw revolving are down in the darkness of the hold. So. the impulsive power which shapes the course of communities may be found in the molding influences which form its citizens.
It is no mere idle curiosity that prompts men lo wish to learn the private as well as the public lives of their fellows. Rather, it is true that such desire tends to prove universal brotherhood; and the interest in personality and biography is not confined to men of any particular caste or avocation.
The list of those to whose lot it falls to play a conspicuous part in the great drama of life is comparatively short; yet communities are made up of individuals, and the aggregate of achievements-no less than the sum total of human happiness-is made up of the deeds of those men and women whose primary aim, through life, is faithfully to perform the duty that comes nearest to hand. Individual influence upon human affairs will be considered potent or insignificant according to the standpoint from which it is viewed. To him who, standing upon the sea-shore, notes the ebb and flow of the tides and listens to the sullen roar of the waves as they break upon the beach in seething foam, seemingly chafing at their limitations, the ocean appears so vast as to need no tributaries. Yet, without the smallest rill that helps to swell the "Father of Waters," the mighty torrent of the Mississippi would be lessened, and the beneficent influence of the Gulf Stream diminished. Countless streams, currents and counter-currents - sometimes mingling, sometimes counteracting each other -collectively combine to give motion to the accumulated mass of waters. So is it-and so must it ever be-in the ocean of human action, which is formed by the blending and repulsion of currents of thought, of influence and of life yet more numerous and more tortuous than those which form "the foundation of the deep."
In the foregoing pages is traced the beginning, growth, and maturity of a concrete thing -Kane County. But the concrete is but the aggregate result of individual labor. The acts and characters of men, like the several faces that compose a composite picture, are wrought together into a compact or heterogeneous whole. History is condensed biography; "biography is history teaching by example."
It is both interesting and instructive to rise above the generalization of history and trace, in the personality and careers of the men from whom it sprang, the principles and influences, the impulses and ambitions, the labors, struggles and triumphs that engrossed their lives.
In the pages that follow are gathered up, with as much detail as the limits of the work allow, the personal record of many of the men who have made Kane County what it is. In each record may be traced some feature which influenced, or has been stamped upon, the civic life.
Here are pioneers, who, "when the fullness of time had come," came from widely scattered sources, some from beyond the sea, impelled by diverse motives, little conscious of the import of their acts, and but dimly anticipating the harvest which would spring from their sowing. They built their little cabins, toiling for a present subsistence while laying the foundations of private fortunes and future advancement.
Most have passed away, but not before they beheld a development of business and population surpassing the wildest dreams of fancy. A few yet remain, whose years have passed the allotted three score and ten, and who love to recount, among the cherished memories of their lives, their reminiscences of early days in Kane County.
