From an earlier biographer we quote the following: "Some essential facts must be dug from out the past where they lie embedded in the detrital chronicles of the race.

Say, then, that away back in 1640 a ship load of Anglo-Saxon freedom landed in New England.
After a brief period some of the more venturesome spirits emigrated to the far west and settled amid the undulations of the Mohawk valley in central New York.

Protestant France also sent westward some Gallic chivalry hungering for freedom.

The fringe of this garment of civilization spread out and reached also into the same valley.

English determination and Huguenot aspiration touched elbows in the war for political and religious freedom, and touched hearts and hands in the struggle for economic freedom.