Alice Cogswell Bemis

g, Massachusetts, on May 18, 1833, of parents who had all the best inheritance to give their children, but few material possessions. When he was an infant the family moved to a small village in Chemung County, New York, where his mother's brother, Henry Farwell, lived with his family. The relation between the two families was a close one, and five years later it was decided that they should move together to Illinois. Reports of its fertile soil and what it promised for the future had come back to them by the slow and uncertain mails. They knew that it offered more for themselves, and what was far more important to them, for their children, than they could ever have in their present surroundings. When they made the great change they knew well the dangers and difficulties that must be met on the journey when taken under the most favorable conditions. They knew, too, how these would be increased in their case, as they were taking so many young children, eight in all; but the courageous band to which they belonge