This volume has been prepared in response to the prevailing and popular demand for the preservation of local history and biography. The method of preparation followed is the most successful and the most satisfactory yet devised--the most successful in the enormous number of volumes circulated, and the most satisfactory in the general preservation of personal biography and family record conjointly with local history. The number of volumes now being distributed seems fabulous. Careful estimates place the number circulated in Ohio at 50,000 volumes; Pennsylvania, 60,000; New York, 75,000; Indiana 40,000; Illinois, 40,000; Iowa, 35,000; Missouri, 25,000; Minnesota, 15,000; Nebraska, 15,000, and all the other States at the same proportionate rate. The southern half of Missouri has as yet scarcely been touched by the historian, but is now being rapidly written.

The design of the present extensive historical and biographical research is more to gather and preserve in attractive form, while fresh with the evidence of truth, the enormous fund of perishing occurrence, than to abstract from insufficient contemporaneous data remote, doubtful or incorrect conclusions. The true perspective of the landscape of life can only be seen from the distance that lends enchantment to the view. It is asserted that no person is competent to write a philosophical history of his own time; that, owing to imperfect and conflicting circumstantial evidence, that yet conceals, instead of reveals, the truth, he cannot take that correct, unprejudiced, logical, luminous and comprehensive view of passing events that will enable him to draw accurate and enduring conclusions. The duty, then, of a historian of his own time is to collect, classify and preserve the material for the final historian of the future. The present historian deals in :fact; the future historian in conclusion. The work of the former is statistical; of the latter, philosophical. To him who has not attempted the collection of historical data, the obstacles to be surmounted are unknown. Doubtful traditions, conflicting statements, imperfect records, inaccurate public and private correspondence, the bias or untruthfulness of informers, and the general obscurity which, more or less, envelops all passing events, combine to bewilder and mislead. The publishers of this volume, fully aware of their inability to furnish a perfect history, an accomplishment vouchsafed to the imagination only of the dreamer or the theorist, make no pretension of having prepared a work devoid of blemish. They feel assured that all thoughtful people, at present and in future, will recognize and appreciate the importance of their undertaking and the great public benefit that has been accomplished.

In the preparation of this volume the publishers have met with nothing but courtesy and assistance from the public. The subscription list was smaller than the publishers hoped and expected to receive; and although the margin of profit was thus cut clown to the lowest possible limit, no curtailment or omission of matter was made from the original extensive design of the work. No subject promised, and many not promised are given. The number of pages given exceeds the number promised by over 400 -- a volume alone. The extreme difficulty of securing the correct spelling of German proper names, must be the excuse of the publishers for the few mistakes of that character to be found in this volume. The publishers disclaim responsibility for the substance of the matter contained in the Biographical Appendix, as the material was wholly furnished by the subjects of the sketches.

MAY, 1888.

THE PUBLISHERS.