CHAPTER I ALBERT A. MOORE, first of three of that name, write this for my descendants, by reason that, as I judge, they should know more fully who they are and of what lineage, and learn somewhat of the part taken by their ancestors in the fine, fierce, stirring days of old, and the hardship and peril they endured in building the commonwealth now passing in large part to peoples alien or lately so. Pioneer American families are swiftly passing, soon to be extinct or at least overborne and negligible. When my children shall learn of the sterling character and rude simplicity of the lives of the pioneers, and their unnoted deaths, and graves now in the main forgotten; as descendants of a passing folk, their modest pride should be, that they come of sturdy stock. So, too, in hardship that must come, let them remember that their forefathers slept in the woods, struggled with wild beasts, fought with Indians, French and English; making their clothing, killing their meat, raising their food from the soil, making their candles, living without stoves, lamps, matches, breakfast foods, tinned goods, telephones, sewing machines, railroads, steamboats, telegraph, gas or electric light and power, motor cars; mainly, without any of the helps now deemed necessities, and thus realize that hardship does not of necessity make for unhappiness, but makes for character, sturdy independence, morals, love of home, family and country. Consider that the people I tell of in the Egypt of Illinois and their neighbor fellow fighters, a pastoral folk, strong in religious faith, simple in life, vigorous of mind and body, through toil and trouble, left, as they supposed, rich heritage for their descendants. If we have not all they builded it is not their fault. It is well to think over such matters; it ought to teach a lesson. Likely, too, I do this, to keep myself in mind as much as may be, when I shall be "gathered to my fathers." No one likes the idea of sleeping in forgotten grave. Those dead of whom I write, abhorred with all mankind the notion of oblivion-being forgotten and as if they never lived. No doubt it would have pleased much any of those dead ancestors of whom I am to speak to have known in life (if possible) that in 1915 a descendant should write the name,as, Enoch, or James, or John, Polly, or Betsy,—in kindly remembrance. One would rather be abused than forgotten. The longing for immortality on the earth, among kin and people-to be remembered and spoken and written of-is universal. There is a kind of immortality in "the recollection one leaves in the memory of man." Myself, I gloom a bit, in the thought that with brief lapse I will be as a "watch in the night"-forgotten, and as if never born. |