INTRODUCTORY. HE time has arrived when it to perpetuate the memory of their achievements. becomes the duty of the people of this county to perpetuate the names of their pioneers, to furnish a record. of their early settlement, and relate the story of their progress. The civilization of our day, the enlightenment of the age and the duty that 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 biographical 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 country from its primitive state may be preserved. Surely and rapidly the great and aged men, who in their prime entered the wilderness and claimed the virgin soil as their heritage, are passing to their graves. The number remaining who can relate the incidents of the first days of settlement is becoming small indeed, so that an actual necessity exists for the collection and preservation of events without delay, before all the early settlers are cut down by the scythe of Time. To be forgotten has been the great dread of mankind from remotest ages. All will be forgotten soon enough, in spite of their best works and the most earnest efforts of their friends to perserve the memory of their lives. The means employed to prevent oblivion and to perpetuate their memory has been in proportion to the amount of intelligence they possessed. The pyramids of Egypt were built to perpetuate the names and deeds of their great rulers. The exhumations made by the archeologists of Egypt from buried Memphis indicate a desire of those people The erection of the great obelisks were for the same purpose. Coming down to a later period, we find the Greeks and Romans erecting mausoleums and monuments, and carving out statues to chronicle their great achievements and carry them down the ages. It is also evident that the Mound-builders, in piling up their great mounds of earth, had but this ideato leave something to show that they had lived. All these works, though many of them costly in the extreme, give but a faint idea of the lives and characters of those whose memory they were intended to perpetuate, and scarcely anything of the masses of the people that then lived. The great pyramids and some of the obelisks remain objects only of curiosity; the mausoleums, monuments and statues are crumbling into dust. It was left to modern ages to establish an intelligent, undecaying, immutable method of perpetuating a full history-immutable in that it is almost unlimited in extent and perpetual in its action; and this is through the art of printing. To the present generation, however, we are indebted for the introduction of the admirable system of local biography. By this system every man, though he has not achieved what the world calls greatness, has the means to perpetuate his life, his history, through the coming ages. The scythe of Time cuts down all; nothing of the physical man is left. The monument which his children or friends may erect to his memory in the cemetery will crumble into dust and pass away; but his life, his achievements, the work he has accomplished, which otherwise would be forgotten, is perpetuated by a record of this kind. To preserve the lineaments of our companions we engrave their portraits, for the same reason we collect the attainable facts of their history. Nor do we think it necessary, as we speak only truth of them, to wait until they are dead, or until those who know them are gone: to do this we are ashamed only to publish to the world the history of those whose lives are unworthy of public record. BIOGRAPHICAL. HITFIELD TOWNSEND, whose portrait is presented on the opposite page of this volume, was one of Sumner County's wellknown men. He was the owner of a fine estate in Wellington Township, which during his residence upon it of about seven years he developed from an unbroken tract of prairie land to a fine condition, erecting upon it a large frame dwelling, adequate barns and other necessary buildings; he further added to its value by planting an orchard, and in various ways embellishing it. Mr. Townsend was born in St. Clair County, Ill.. October 24, 1823, and was a son of George Whitfield Townsend, who is supposed to have been born in Tennessee, from which State he removed to Illinois, becoming a pioneer of St. Clair County. There he bought a large tract of land and carried on the pursuit of agriculture quite extensively, continuing to abide in that county until his death. He of whom we write was reared and educated there, the school which he attended being held in a log house, with a fire-place and home-made furniture, the seats made by splitting logs, hewing them to a tolerably smooth surface on one side, and inserting wooden pins in the other side for legs. In this temple of learning, under the instruction of teachers whose curriculum comprised little else than the "three R's," he acquired all the education possible to be obtained, and de veloped the sturdy nature befitting the son of a pioneer. Mr. Townsend assisted his father on the farm and resided with his parents until their death, and for a time thereafter continued to live on the old homestead. He then located on land adjoining it, added a kitchen to the small house that was already on the place, and made other improvements as rapidly as possible. In 1880, renting the farm, which is still owned by his family, he came to this county, where he had previously purchased three hundred and twenty acres of prairie land, compris. ing the west half of section 19, in Wellington Township. When he took possession the only improvements consisted of a small house and straw stable, but these were soon replaced by more substantial structures. On this now beautiful estate, which he brought to a high state of cultivation, Mr. Townsend breathed his last January 20, 1887, deeply mourned by a large circle of friends and acquaintances, to whom his high moral and Christian character had endeared him. In the family circle he had been a loving companion and parent, and here his loss was still more deeply felt. Mr. Townsend was twice married. His first wife, Jane Bradsby, so far as known, was a native of Illinois. She died on the home farm in St. Clair County, fifteen months after her marriage, leaving no children. The second matrimonial alliance of Mr. Townsend was contracted March 18, 1866, the bride being Mrs. Annie (Huseman) Cook. She was born in Bielefeld, in the Westphalen district of Minden, Prussia. Her father, Henry Huseman, |