query "What good will the Bunker Hill Motimnenl do'P' 

 " What good," says he, " does any thing do 7 What is good / 

 Does any thing do any good ? I. should like to have the idea 

 good explained and analyzed and run out to its original ele- 

 ments." If the contemplation of virtuous and heroic deeds, of 

 generous and patriotic sentiments, ^ — of the greatest sacrifices 

 for principle, which the world ever beheld, ever did any good, 

 ever purified the heart and stimulated mankind onward in the 

 paths of honor, virtue, and uprightness, then the contemplation 

 of the characters of our New England ancestors, to which such 

 a pursuit will inevitably lead, must be conducive of the great- 

 est good. 



Genealogy, generally speaking, is to most persons a very 

 unattractive as well as uninteresting pursuit, admitting of no 

 lofty flights of fancy, and requiring no very powerful intellect 

 to compass it. It certainly is no field for wide imaginative 

 range, but is hard dry matter of fact digging, — and yet it 

 requires a particular order of intellect not possessed by every 

 one. A man may be a good statesman, a good jurist, a good 

 political economist, — he may be a man of genius, a poet, a 

 philosopher, and still be a very poor genealogist. Phrenologi- 

 cally speaking a good genealogist must have strongly devel- 

 oped the bumps of order, method, time, combined with great 

 patience, perseverance and industry. Genealogy may be liter- 

 ally called " the pursuit of knowledge under difficulties," — 

 and in this money-making utilitarian age, one must not be dis- 

 heartened if he detects a scornful curl of the lip, or an expres- 

 sion full of pity and compassion for the folly and weakness 

 which prompts any one to enquire about his own or another's 

 antecedents. Plumbling indeed would it be to the pride of the 

 present generation did they believe that in much less than a 

 century hence, their descendants would be searching for the7n 

 amid the dry bones of musty records, and almost obsolete and 

 forgotten traditions. But still more would their bump of self 

 esteem be depressed, if they thought their descendants in the 

 same space of time, would not consider them of sufficient im- 

 portance to be looked up at all, — but let me tell you this is the 

 case with many of the families of the first settlers, the puritan 

 stock, of New England. 



I have spoken of the genealogy of our Puritan ancestors as 

 a duty which we owe to them, and to make this claim upon us 

 the more apparent, it will be proper to take a view of their 

 cnaracters, the times in which they lived, and the circumstan-^ 

 ces with which they were surrounded. Man, ayc are told, is 

 the creature of circumstances. Now we do not intend to go 



