Transcribed from THE PORTRAIT & BIOGRAPHICAL ALBUM OF WHITESIDE COUNTY, ILLINOIS

Originally published 1885
Chapman Bros.
Chicago, IL

Transcribed by: Denise McLoughlin
Tampico Historical Society
www.tampicohistoricalsociety.citymax.com

VALUE OF LOCAL HISTORY

The great dread of man from remote ages has been to be forgotten. The means employed to prevent this and to perpetuate his memory has been in proportion to the amount of intelligence he possessed. It has been conceded now by scientists that the principal object of the Egyptians in building their pyramids was to perpetuate the name and deeds of their great leaders and rulers. The walls in the extensive apartments beneath those huge stone monuments are covered with paintings illustrating the deeds, both in peace and war, of her illustrious princes, and in chronological order. These colors are as bright, apparently, as when they were first laid on, and the work shows great skill and artistic design. The exhumations made by the archeologist of Egypt from buried Memphis indicate a desire of these people to perpetuate the memory of their achievements. The walls of these palaces found buried here are decorated with historical emblems representing the lives and deeds of these people. In Memphis they displayed a higher art. They carved out in marble elegant and life-like statues of their distinguished princes, accompanied with hieroglyphics, illustrating their deeds. The erection of those 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 evident that the Mound-Builders, in piling up their great mounds of earth, had but this idea - to leave something to show that they had lived. All these works, thee representations, though many of them costly in the extreme, give but a faint idea of the lives and character of those whose memory they were intended to perpetuate, and scarcely nothing of the masses of the people that then lived. The great pyramids and some of the obelisks remain; objects only for scientists or curiosity seekers; the mausoleums, monuments and statues are crumbling into dust. The monuments, statues are crumbling into dust. The monuments, statues and other relics are being gradually conveyed to the different museums of the world, and soon there will nothing remain in these countries to illustrate the lives of the people who once dwelt in them.

Generation after generation comes and goes like the leaves of autumn. Nations have been born, have had their rise and fall, and then passed away, leaving scarcely a riffle on the great ocean of time to show that they ever existed, so imperfect and mutable has been their means to perpetuate their achievements. It was left to modern ages to establish an intelligent, undecaying, immutable method of perpetuating this history, - immutable in that it is almost unlimited in extent, and perpetual in its action; and ths is through the art of printing. Nations may become disintegrated and pass away, monuments and statues may crumble into dust, but books will live. This art has been rapidly advancing from its first inception until now it would seem that there were no longer any further ground for improvement. This is preeminently an age of printing, an age of books.

To the present generation, however, are we indebted for the introduction of the admirable system of local history and 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; so alike has every community.

We come now to the work before us: To our patrons, we say, that a 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 achievement, the work he has accomplished, which otherwise would be forgotten, is perpetuated by this book through coming ages. Shakespeare has said: ‘The evil men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.’

Our aim in this work has been only to preserve the good. We sought to gather from the best sources of information obtainable, the conditions and incidents of the early pioneer life, and to present that, together with the present development of the county. Many of the pioneers came into this beautiful country without a dollar in their pockets, but with the unflinching determination to carve out their fortunes and build up a country. With undaunted hearts, and a courage equal to that of the great heroes of our history, they began life.