The following interesting items about the early history of Nunda were written and brought to this office by Mr. M. O. Barker, who is ninety-three years old and is the oldest person now living, who was born in the town of Nunda. He is still active and enjoying good health.

A few of the little incidents that I remembered at the age of ninety-three that transpired here seventy to ninety years ago.

I can remember being out of the door at father's in the evening and hearing a pack of wolves howling fearfully not far off. A couple of Indians bringing a little fawn to father's and begging their dinner and the little deer ran off behind the shingle shanty and lay down where the Indians caught it again.

Of going with the Shute and Bush boys over the hill toward Dansville in a foot path through the woods to Mr. Reynold's, to get a reed for mother's loom and seeing William and Belston Reynolds eating green corn they had roasted in the fire place.

Going up in the north woods with mother huckleberrying and seeing the path that the Indians followed from Squaky Hill, Mt. Morris to Chautauqua Hollow. They camped frequently in James Paynes' south woods in the fall and winter while hunting deer and I remember the name of Fall Chief, Straight Back and Red Jacket.

Of quite a flock of deer on father's wheat and when they saw me, they hoisted their little white flags as they sailed over the fences into the woods. Of seeing swarms of locusts here on the scrub oaks.

Of father and Mr. Butterfield splitting a big pine log into rails and Mr. Butterfield asked me my age. I told him just eight years and he said that was just his David's age.

When boiling sap in father's sugar bush a number of springs, the pigeons came over in immense swarms mornings from the woods in Grove, where they roosted, to the wheat fields in Mt. Morris.

When Newton Barker's uncle, Josiah Bradley, Monday mornings, brought Emily Page, his future wife, our school teacher, to school.

Attending meetings in the school house that stood on the north side of Mill street, five or six rods east of the square in Nunda village. Going up on the hill Sundays to hear Deacon Wisner preach. I wished many times in those days that I could become a christian like my father and mother, and when revival meetings were held at our school, I gave myself up, when it seemed as if a burden left my heart, which made me feel light as air, and so happy I could glorify God, an experience it is my earnest desire that all my children, grand-children and all others may enjoy.

M. O. BARKER.

But every year that passes pushes farther and farther toward oblivion the facts of our early history, the present generation is interested only in the things of today, which things will of course become

in time the history of tomorrow, so upon us older ones whose family traditions reach back to the foundations of our country, rests the responsibility of gathering and preserving those precious relics.

There was a time in the history of this society when a special effort was made to gather up these treasures and classify and store them in the log cabin. The result was a splendid collection as you all know and the long years of loving service of the custodian, Mr. Lewis, is a pleasant memory to every member of the society. That it is not too late to largely augment this collection I am quite sure, and I would urge the members to search diligently the lofts and garrets of their ancestral homes for those one time useful articles of pioneer life that prosperity and progress cast aside for better things. Scan again those old letters, deeds and manuscripts that have a bearing on the early days in the history of this region, bring them all to the society as a freewill offering, that the history of Livingston County and the Genesee Country may be perpetuated.

While our log cabin is unique and worth while as an exact reproduction of the early homes of the pioneers, and while so far it has proven a safe harbor for the society's treasures, still there is a regrettable uncertainty as to the absolute safety of these things that is not pleasant to contemplate. Loss by fire, possible encroachments of the elements, the ravages of vermin, and the deterioration by improper casing, any of these possibilities, might work irreparable loss. Insurance of the property means nothing, for our treasures cannot be replaced by money. Last summer under the guidance of Mr. Charles Milliken, President of the Ontario County Historical Society I enjoyed a thorough inspection of the beautiful building in Canandaigua in which the treasures of that great county are stored. It was a revelation to me and a most charming one. In company with the public library they occupy a building specially designed for the use of the two organizations. I will not attempt to describe it, go and see it if you can. It is beautiful, perpetual and absolutely perfect. Now this is just what we need, a suitable building, fireproof, convenient and artistic, commensurate with the needs, the culture and the wealth of this great county, the heart of the Genesee country, the cradle of Western New York. I wish to go on record as president of the Historical Society as advocating this thing, and I hold that our invaluable possessions are not only dear to us as members, but to every citizen within our borders. I hold that these relics of the past occupy as honorable and inviolable a a position in the archives of the county as do records stored in fireproof accessible receptacles in the court house at Geneseo. What greater asset has a county than its history? and what county in all the Empire State has a more honorable one than old Livingston and is more worthy to have that history perpetuated? It is due to her that suitable refuge be provided for her relics; that future citizens within her borders may look on those things and see and know what their ancestors endured in the brave days of old.

Your president has no scheme to offer whereby the desired results mentioned may be brought about, but that it is in the range of possibility there is no doubt, and that it will come in good time you may rest assured if the interest in our society holds as the present prospects are that it will.

Keep it in mind fellow members, and as you add to the treasures of the society with your gleanings from the past, do what you can to forward the cause of a suitable refuge for the splendid collection now so inadequately housed.

I have been strongly impressed with the cordial get together spirit that pervades our membership, a spirit that bids defiance to the elements and brings us in happy companionship from the uttermost borders of the county at this the most inclement season of the year. The motive that impelled our founders to place the date of our annual meeting in January may have been a good one and we wont venture to unearth it. It may have been to test our endurance as descendents of those old worthies who in the winter of "eighteen hundred and froze to death" subsisted on scant rations of pounded corn, slippery elm bark and a decoction of sumach leaves in lieu of tea. Be that as it may, and with all due respect to our honorable founders, it would seem no breach of faith with them to change the date of our annual meeting to such a time and season as shall be more consistent with the comfort, health and inclinations of the members. Of course we must not give up our summer meeting, the memories of them are too precious to every one of us to even think of such a thing, but in this favored clime, this divine country of the Genesee, the year is long enough to have them both when nature is at her best. And now in closing I thank you all for your consideration in listening to this rambling address. Our friends have arranged much for your delectation, and when we leave this place I am sure we will be glad that Nunda was our point of meeting and her kind sons and daughters our hosts and hostesses.

Vocal solo by Miss Robertson.

The address of the day by Mr. Fletcher C. Peck, of Nunda, ensued. His address was as follows:

ADDRESS OF FLETCHER C. PECK

Mr. President, members of the Association, ladies and gentlemen:
For the honor that has been conferred upon me, by the invita-
tion to address this Society, I thank you. I thank you, not as the
coventional thing to do, but because the thanks are sincere. No more
indeed may be said in this regard for as was observed by a wise man,
long ago,

"Words are like leaves, and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath, is rarely found."

Human recorded history commenced with the Book of Genesis, and from the time that God pronounced the world finished and then made Adam and Eve with the injunction to them to go forth and multiply the earth, down to the birth of Christ, in Bethlehem, human history has been made by men and women alike in continuous course in the path of Civilization and Christianity.

Today, each one of us, consciously or otherwise, are making history, and each plays his part and makes his contribution; just as a little babbling brook, the more pretentious creek and the mighty river combine to feed and swell the grand ocean, so we contribute the best or the worst that is in us to the pages of history.