Pioneer history of Ingham County, compiled and arranged by Mrs. Franc L. Adams, secretary of the Ingham County pioneer and historical society.

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7PIONEER HISTORY OF INGIHAM COUNTY

lin, with a fourth not engaged when the notice was printed.
The board of education was composed of W. W. Root, W. A. Teel,
A. A. Howard, Perry Henderson, Dr. C. H. Darrow and R. F.
Griffin. The graduates that year were Vernon J. Tefft and Ella
Peck. Do these names mean anything to you?
At this time Miss E. J. Fuller was conducting her private school
at the Fuller farm east of town.
In the same paper was a letter from Rev. Wim. Rice pleading
for help in temperance work. He was pastor of the M. E. church
at that time, with Rev. Philip Farnham, the Baptist minister,
and Rev. G. W. Barlow in the Presbyterian puplit. The Presbyterian church stood then on Oak street, where Mrs. Bement's
home now is.
Do you remember when the church bells were tolled at the
death of anyone in town? When my father, Rev. Iosea Kittridge, died my Iother felt that she could not bear to hear the
bell, and the practice was practically discontinued after that.
We produced some noted men in those years. Judge Erastus
Peck, long on the Jackson circuit, Judge G. M. Huntington, of
our own circuit, and H. P. Henderson, Federal Judge of Utah.
How many of you remember Marshall Pease with his wonderful
baritone voice who sang for us so beautifully? Hie was descended
from the Page family, sure enough pioneers in this country, and
from the Pease family, noted pioneer musicians.
Would it not be a good scheme for this society to get possession
of the drop curtain which hung for so many years in the opera
house? That would be a relic worth keeping and would remind
us of the business firms now only a memory. It is a curiosity in
its way and well worth preserving, if only to remind us of the
many times we have watched it and waited for its going up.
But time would fail me to call the names of all those who
lived and loved and labored in Mason fifty years ago, and against
the majority of those names has been set the asterisk of death.
A. L. Vandercook seems to be the only one who was in business
here in 1870 who still has a place among our active business men.
What a wonderful fifty years it has been, and what a great
advance the world has made in that time! If our fathers who died
before that date could have been told of all the things that would