The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-08-28
steiMer's History Of GuiIford and Mad
 ksOn
[By Henry P. Robinson.l

This book of some five hundred page
 octave, bravely published by the author
 Dr. Bernard c. Steiner, in Baltimore il
 1897, has had a romantic evolution.
 Guilford has been a tough subject fo
 historians, and has exhausted severa
 generations of writers.
 First. Parson Thomas Ruggles, Jr.
 looking forth from his study window.
 upon the melancholy panorama of the
 green with its heapy mounds anG
 stubbed gravestones began to write the
 sober story of our past He listened t.
 elders, who in turn had listened to some
 of the first settlers themselves, anC
 gathered precious hearsay from the
 very birthdays of the town. Then Dr
 David Dudley Field, senior, turned his
 searching eyes upon the subject, visited
 Ockley and Cranbrook, England, in
 1S4S, on historic quest for news and
 passed it on to his heirs at the next generation
 In 1S40 Hon. Ralph D. Smith, a
 worthy third in this triumvirate, grap- pied anew with the old story, still toughening with time, and left annals
 SO valuable in outline that they were
 published in 1877 by his son-in-law, Dr..
 Lewis H. Steiner
 When MT. Smith passed away in 1874, his grandson, the present author was a curly-headed lad of so few years that | his remark at the time, that he had
 met with a great loss" while it ex- | pressed the village sentiment, was quoted as sententious for child To | have lived to bring to more generous is- l sue this unfinished work, almost be- | queathed to him by his grandfather, is an instance so rare of literary labor, continued for generations, that it l throws certain romance over the book | and gives to the young author a re- ward, which is peculiarly his own. And as "the last stroke put to the fin l ish of business seems to mark the performance of the whole,'' so the merit of the present author seems to overtop that of his mighty predecessors. This book at last puts Guilford well before the world and leaves 1t no eX- cuse for ignorance for the world at large has been learnedly misinformed about us.
 You can scarcely open the most pre- tentious encyclopedia or dictionary of biography, under such great names as Appleton, Allibone Brooks, without finding the allusions to our affairs mixed with wrong. Boston writers still have to teach that old error in naviga- ton that our first settlers, under the Rev. Henry Whitfield, in company with George Fenwick and Lady Boteler, with Durham cows and Dorking poultry aboard their high-pooped vessels, came to anchor in Boston harbor June 1637; whereas they were slowly drifting, af- ter seven weeks voyage, into the har- Dor of Qunnipiac, July, 1889.
 But we ourselves sometimes contri- bute to obscure and befog the locality of Guilford, for when we go abroad or quit the world and give out our origin to inquirers we prevaricate and declare we have just come from New Haven, or some other great place, suitable to our high ambition
 Dr. Steiner, leader of Yale scholar ship in the class of 1888, trained in the Johns Hopkins school of history, au- thor of the History of Education in Connecticut, has brought to his task all the cunning of the latest historical methods.
 No class of historical writers deals more with original sources of informa- tion than our local analists; this puts them in the front rank of investigators ! and gives the highest honor to their work.
 Those droll Gothic characters of our | ancient records dating from 1645 writ ten more for past service than as con- | scous history, form the skeleton and | outline of the story of Gulford and | Madison. Contemporary records, early | and lately published, that throw side lights upon our traditions have been drawn from; as those gath cred by Hubbard, Trumbull, Barber Palfrey, Sprague, Tibley, F. B. Dexter ana others. But especially the New Haven and the Connecticut Colonial Records: the Massa chusetts and Con- necticut Historical Collections and the Genealogical Register of New England, have been plundered of what concerns and belongs to us.
 The findings of recent explorations. on our two hundred and ffftieth anni- in 1889, when our entire popula- ton, capable of bearing arms were set | buried treasures, are moderately incor- porated
 History is study of the law of change" and the story of Guilford al- though she has devoutly opposed change with all her might, is yet rich n quaint relics of abandoned ways
 Here it seems prudent to say what everybody knows, but shant go with put saying that history, as an after hought, is fragmentary and represen- .ative. What's hit is history; what's missed is mystery"
 We will not carp at and pluck this book as if we had so many precious se 'rets that are not told in it; and be- ause we once heard our father say hat his grandfather shot a bear be- onging to the eighteenth century true), we will not complain and throw town the book because great-grand- ather's black bear is not once men, toned in it. The story tells of the first settlers ,, with valuable lists of later settlers; of ounter emigration back to England nd later swarming away to Newark nd the west; of the aborigines known lya /