Agricultural College, believing that money expended for educating our boys and girls would be returned a hundredfold by their increasing usefulness. He believed that the educational advantages denied him should be placed within the reach of every boy and girl. Those enjoying the splendid opportunities at these institutions to-day owe a debt of gratitude to such men as P. Dean Warner, who in the face of strong opposition stood by them and started them on their careers of usefulness. His services as a lawmaker ended with a term in the State Senate in 1869-70. He was an active member of the Constitutional Convention of 1867, a body that numbered in its membership many able and influential men. The Constitution submitted was not adopted, however, sharing the fate of many amendments submitted during a period when it seemed to be the settled policy of the people to vote No upon any suggested change in the organic law of the State.

He was a man of deep religious convictions and was a member of the Presbyterian Church for many years. He was attentive to the minor duties of the good citizen in the home community and was foremost in every movement for the improvement of the little village he loved to call home. Its churches and its schools had in him a loyal friend. He was active in many lines of business, but it was as the village storekeeper and banker that he was best known.

As old age brought infirmities he gave up one by one the business cares and while waiting for the final summons enjoyed the well earned freedom from the cares and activities of a business career lasting nearly if not quite three score years and ten.

He was a friend and counselor of three generations of Farmington people and there are many men in Oakland County who are to-day the better for having relied upon his judgment and acted upon his advice.

This sketch would not be complete without a reference to the woman who shared with him the toil and privation of pioneer life and lived to witness the marvelous change that such as they have brought about. P. Dean Warner and Rhoda Elizabeth Botsford were married November 8, 1845, in Ann Arbor by Prof. Tenbrook, and to them were given almost sixty-six years of happy married life before his death, August 28, 1910. The faithful wife, my mother, is still with us, at the rare old age of eighty-seven, looking back upon a long life filled with good deeds.

Michigan owes much to such men and such women as these, and the organization that seeks to perpetuate and keep alive a feeling of regard and affection for them has my best wishes for its future, and should certainly have the support at all times of our State and all its citizens.

Mrs. Warner died at Farmington, Aug. 11, 1911.

MRS. FRANK A. WEAVER

Mrs. Frank A. Weaver died Monday morning, May 2, 1910, at her home in Charlotte, Michigan. She was prominent in club work, not only in her city and county but in the State Federation of Women's Clubs, of which she was secretary two years. She had been associate editor of the Michigan Club Bulletin, published from this city, since the be gining of its publication. Her last work for the federation was editing a cookbook, under the direction and with the assistance of the state president, Mrs. Florence G. Mills, and looking after sales of same, not only at the last annual meeting in Hillsdale, but by correspondence since that time, even to a few weeks before her death. The cookbook will be regarded by Michigan club women as a memorial of her work and interest in the federation. She was for three years president of the County Federation of Women's Clubs and was twice elected president of the Charlotte Woman's Club. Her home was perhaps more often used for club functions than that of any other member. Her death is a loss to club women here and elsewhere. She leaves besides her husband, Dr. F. A. Weaver, two step-sons, to whom she has so faithfully and well filled the place of mother that she will be as sincerely mourned by them as an own mother could be. She spent the winter at Austin, Texas, where the older son, Hal C. Weaver, is a professor in the state university. The younger son, Don, is a senior medical student in the Univer sity of Michigan. He was her attendant for the last few days. Dr. Weaver received a telegram about three weeks ago from his son in Texas stating that Mrs. Weaver was worse and he left the same day for Austin. She rallied and they came home a few days later.

HENRY WHITELEY

BY HARRY H. WHITELEY

Henry Whiteley was born in Hartlepool, England, on February 2nd, 1853, being at the time of his death fifty-seven years, one month and ten days old. With his father, a contractor, he came to this country in the early sixties, and lived a year or two in New York City and near Trenton, New Jersey. From there they came to Jackson, Michigan, where his mother and sister joined them. Here he spent some time sell

ing papers and watching the enlistment of the soldiers, for the great Civil War was then at its height. Once he endeavored to go to the front as a drummer boy but his father caught him as the train was leaving.

From Jackson he went to Mason, which became his home for many years. Here he worked, became express agent, conducted a little book store, and was married on November 16th, 1878, to Miss Lulu Piper, who survives him after a happy married life of over thirty-one years.

In 1882 he went to Gaylord, then the terminus of the Mackinaw division of the Michigan Central railroad. He gradually progressed in life as bookkeeper, school-teacher and county clerk in which office he served two terms. During this time he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1889. He continued in the practice of law at Gaylord until 1893, when he was appointed bookkeeper in the State Land Office in Lansing. He remained there until 1900, the last two years as chief clerk.

The latter part of December, 1900, he came to Millersburg and on January 15th, 1901, published the first number of the Presque Isle County News and opened an office for the practice of law, remaining here until the time of his death. Such is a brief chronology of his busy and well spent life.

He has always been active in politics, a staunch Republican at all times. He was chairman of the Republican county committee of Otsego County for a number of years and has been a prominent figure at Republican state and district conventions and political gatherings.

For over thirty-five years he has been an Odd Fellow, at the time of his death being a member of Capital Lodge, No. 45, Friendship Encampment and the Daughters of Rebeccah, all of Lansing. At one time he was prominently mentioned as a candidate for Grand Secretary of the order in Michigan. He was also a member of the Knights of the Maccabees, belonging to the Millersburg tent.

With but a few years of schooling, all obtained before he reached his twelfth year, he was forced to obtain his education in the school of experience, and through studying while employed. He was strictly a self-made man, attaining success by sheer persistency and never ceasing hard knocks. While only a boy he had a widowed mother and sister to support, necessitating his leaving school. He worked in the woods in the Saginaw valley in the early seventies. In business he was energetic, a pusher, and a booster. By the very strenuosity of his labors he has made enemies. When he had an object in view he spared nothing in attaining it. But even those who did not agree with him gave him full credit for his ability "to do things." It is said that no man amounts to anything who makes no enemies. So, knowing when he made enemies it was not through a desire to do so, but merely an incident in the

achievement of a purpose. I feel sure, that he made for himself a place in the life about him. He was a loving husband and parent. He gave all his children a good education and prided himself on carefully supervising their studies. He belonged to the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a regular attendant and was especially interested in Sunday school work with the boys and girls.

There is no one, perhaps, who was so intimately associated with him as myself, nor who could better write his obituary. We have been associated in business for eight years, working in close harmony, depending on each other as only a father and son could do, enjoying the pleasures of success and sharing the bitterness of adversity. We have been close to each other, since my first recollection, in my boyish frolic and studies, down through my high school and college life, keeping close track of my progress, guiding, urging, restraining. I shall miss him sorely in the future of my life.

LUCRETIA WILLIAMS

At the annual meeting of the Society, June 4th, 1908, Rev. W. P. Q. Byrd, of the African Methodist Episcopal Church of Lansing, presented a colored lady, Lucretia Williams, who was born a slave in Kentucky, and later moved to Maryland where she saw many famous men of the nation. There are very few slaves living in the Northern States. She remembered the excitement of the War of 1812, and the battle of New Orleans. She was separated from her husband and children, but after gaining her freedom under the proclamation of President Lincoln, she gathered her family together and they moved to Niles, Michigan, in 1865. Mrs. Williams was alert and active up to June 26, 1911, when she laid down on a couch, at the house of her daughter, Mrs. Ellen Bannister, of Lansing, and breathed her last. She had ten children, only two of whom survive her, fourteen grandchildren and six great grandchildren. Her 108th birthday was celebrated January 1, 1911.

FREDERICK M. COWLES

Frederick Mortimer Cowles was born of Puritan ancestry in New Berlin, Chenango, County, N. Y., February 3, 1824. His father was Eliot Cowles and his mother Sarah Salome Phelps, a descendant of William Phelps who came from England in 1630 in the first ship of the Winthrop fleet, the Mary and John. They settled at Dorchester, Mass. In 1635 they made the first settlement on Connecticut soil at Windsor. William Phelps was one of the members of the first court in Connecticut composed of two men from each of the then three townships, Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield, who governed the colony until the election of Governor Haynes in 1639 when Mr. Phelps was chosen as one of the six magistrates or assistants Mr. Cowles had the distinction of being a descendant from seven of the founders of Windsor, Conn., whose names appear on the town records of 1640. Lieut. Timothy Phelps served in the Pequot War and Capt. Abel Phelps in the French and Indian War, while three others were engaged in the War of the Revolution. The name of Ensign Elkanah Phelps is on the monument erected in Norfolk, Conn., to the soldiers of that town in the Revolution. Mr. Cowles enlisted in the Mexican War but his company was not called into action. When a boy of nine years he moved with his family to Chardon, Ohio, and in 1842, he came with his brother, the late Joseph P. Cowles, and his family to Aurelius, Ingham County, Mich. There they erected a sawmill running it summers and in the winters Mr. Cowles taught school. During the winter of 1846-47 when he was teaching in Ionia, the last legislature sitting in Detroit, voted to locate the new capitol at the intersection of the Red Cedar and Grand Rivers. As soon as the spring opened, Mr. Cowles starting on foot through the woods arrived April 10, 1847, at the same time the commissioners for laying out the capitol did, and there remained a continuous resident until his death. A log house occupied by Father Page and his three sons-in-law marked North Lansing at that time. Mr. Cowles slept for two weeks in a barn in the rear of the now Franklin terraces, until the house Smith Tooker was building on Wall street on the site of the present house of Mr. Spoor was completed.

Mr. Cowles was married October 16th, 1853, to Delia L. Ward, daughter of Alanson and Olive Perkins Ward of Warsaw, N. Y.

Mr. Cowles was a contractor and builder and erected many of the first buildings of Lansing and assisted in the first capitol. He very soon became interested in the mercantile business with Hiram H. Smith, continuing their business relations until Mr. Smith moved to Jackson.