sciousness that his last appeal for humanity had been answered.

Loyal to his time and people, firm in his convictions, brave enough to abandon a policy he found to be wrong, he has gone to his reward. One of the most remarkable men in the State's history, his sphere was too limited and far too few were brought under his influence.

William Taylor Davidson

EDITOR OF THE FULTON DEMOCRAT," LEWISTOWN, ILLINOIS. ILLINOIS.

BY SUPT. JOHN R. ROWLAND, CITY SCHOOLS, ASTORIA, ILLINOIS. The passing of W. T. Davidson, for nearly sixty years the editor and proprietor of The Fulton Democrat, removes from the ranks of provincial journalism in this section perhaps the last of the editors of the old school, and in many respects one of the most remarkable members of the fourth estate" that Illinois, or the Middle West, has ever produced. Mr. Davidson's death occurred at his late home in Lewistown, Illinois, on Sunday evening, January 3, 1915, after a protracted illness of over a year's duration. He was aged 77 years, 10 months and 25 days.

No adequate account of a character so unique and a career so extraordinary as that of Editor Davidson can be given in the limited compass of a paper for publication in the Journal. In lieu of the fuller and more fitting memoir which his distinguished services amply merit, the brief sketch here compiled will contain only the most salient features of a biography so rich in historical material that the history of Fulton County could be written but meagerly indeed without the truly “wondrous story" of the life and manifold activities of this militant pioneer newspaper man.

Every statement of fact made in the following article is believed to be authentic. For most of the data used herein the writer wishes at the outset to make proper acknowledgment and give due credit. He is mainly indebted, first, to two autobiographical sketches, one of which was published in The Democrat December 8, 1887, and the other in the History of Fulton County, 1906; and secondly, to an admirable and

copious "Biographical Memoir," by the Rev. J. M. D. Davidson, a nephew of the deceased journalist, which was prepared for the Memorial Number of The Fulton Democrat, February 10, 1915.

NOTABLE LINEAGE.

William Taylor Davidson was born in Petersburg, Menard County, Illinois, February 8, 1837, "three miles distant from the spot where at that time Abraham Lincoln was selling dry goods, groceries and whisky to the naked, hungry and thirsty pioneers." He was the son of Isham Gillham and Sarah Ann (Springer) Davidson. Both parents could trace their direct ancestry back through Revolutionary patriots to early settlers in the colonies, the father's by way of the Carolinas to old Virginia and the maternal line from Kentucky to the founding of Delaware colony.

The Davidsons come of heroic Scotch-Irish stock and the Springers are of notable Teutonic origin. Isham Gillham Davidson was a native of South Carolina, where his birth occurred in 1802. Sarah Ann Springer was born in Washington County, Kentucky, June 2, 1810. To get away from Negro slavery, both of these families moved to Illinois, the former in 1808 and the latter in 1811, and settled as near neighbors in Madison County, some fifteen miles east of St. Louis, where the children grew up together under the hard and strenuous frontier conditions of those troublous times.

During the second war with Great Britain, 1812-15, the settlers there lived much of the time in stockaded forts on account of the hostility of the Indians, the men cultivating their fields with rifles close at hands. They passed through several scenes of bloody massacres by the savages, one of which horrors the little Springer girl witnessed when only four years old. Here I. G. Davidson and Sarah A. Springer were married in 1826 and lived on a farm near Edwardsville till 1835, when they removed to Petersburg, where he established a flouring mill and owned the principal store.

The Davidson home in the village of Petersburg was a free hotel for all preachers, lawyers and strangers from every sec

tion. Lincoln, Douglas, Peter Cartwright and many scores of others afterwards famous, were welcome and frequent guests at that humble fireside, as they continued to be later on at Lewistown. A fire destroyed the mill and the panic of '37 swept away the store and even most of the household goods. Mr. Davidson then became interested in a coach line and secured the contract for carrying the mail from Springfield to Lewistown. This brought him to the latter place as the terminus of the route.

At the time of this move, in the fall of 1838, William T. was less than two years of age. Mrs. Davidson, with the child in arms, was rowed across the Illinois River in a skiff; and it is said that the tow-headed baby thus made his entrance into Fulton county "squalling and kicking like all possessed.” Although then so young, he often claimed to remember the first two houses which the family occupied in Lewistown, living about a year in each. In 1840 a cabin of logs was erected on the site in the west part of town where from that date the Davidson residence remained for more than a halfcentury.

In this log house, on the street which the Davidsons themselves subsequently euphoniously re-named Euclid avenue, William's childhood was spent. He had two brothers, one of whom was older and the other younger than himself, and three sisters: James Madison and Mary Francis, born in Madison County; and Lucy, Sarah and Elihu, born in Lewistown. Two other children of I. G. Davidson and wife, also born in Madison County, had died in infancy. Of this family W. T. was the last to pass away, having outlived his sister, Sarah, the next longest survivor, by nearly twenty years.

BOYHOOD AND SCHOOLING.

Thus graphically William himself tells of his early life: "It was common in those days for folks in this country to be poor, but our family was uncommonly poor. We never suffered for food, shelter, or clothing; but life's luxuries were unknown to us. Yet few days passed by when some minister or stranger or crowd of them, did not find a cordial welcome

at our hearthstone." And it seems a most fortunate thing for a lad of his supersensitive temperament to have had such uncommon poverty of boyhood so tempered by unstinted selfdenial and blessed by "free-hearted hospitality."

As a further mitigation of the blighting effects of untoward surroundings throughout the formative period of his youth, the boy had the advantage of the wise counsel and worthy example of a father whose sound judgment and strict integrity were never questioned, and the devoted care and pious precepts of a rarely prudent and saintly mother. He quite significantly says: "I had no end of religious training, and at four years of age was so learned in Bible history that when Father McNeill, our pastor, kindly asked who had taught it to me, I told him, 'Why I always knowed it.'"'

His formal schooling, however, was of the most primitive sort, scarcely equal to what as a rule the children of that period enjoyed. He was enrolled in the log cabin "pay school" at the age of four and attended fitfully two or three months in the year, missing some years entirely. "I got through Kirkham's Grammar, and do not remember a single rule. In arithmetic I got to fractions, and finally graduated in McGuffey's Third Reader and Webster's Spelling Book." But he could read and spell "fairly well," as he modestly adds, "and write in a scandalously awkward fashion."

After his twelfth year he had to go to work teaming. For five years he drove his father's team, hauling produce to the Illinois River at Havana or Liverpool, with merchandise for the return trips; or taking building stone or sand to town from adjacent quarries, coal from nearby mines, or wood from the forests primeval. While still a mere child he handled many hundred loads of stone, bricks, sand, wood and merchandise. Lads of his age nowadays can hardly comprehend the bitter cold, the frightful storms, the hardships and dangers this slight boy encountered during these youthful years.

BEGINS NEWSPAPER CAREER.

Before he was seventeen years old, a withered arm and frail physique led him to become a printer's apprentice, beginning