Portrait and biographical album of Ingham and Livingston counties, Michigan, containing biographical sketches of prominent and representative citizens of the counties ... the governors of the state and of all the presidents of the United States.

PORTRAIT AND BIOGRAPHICAL ALBUM.

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Fellows. Mrs. Frank is possessed of a liberal education, having completed her studies at Howell,
and she is an active worker in the Sunday-school
and church, being connected with the Methodist
Episcopal Church.
'.. || ----%4.+q-q-?- '_
^> EORGE E. RANNEY, M. D., Surgeon of
Second Michigan Cavalry. Biography treats
of the individual; it is not history. History treats of men in the mass; it is not biography.
Still, the two are intimately and all but inextricably intertwined. Twin sisters they are, looking
on each other with the kindliest smile; both feeding the lamps of knowledge, but pouring pure their
oil from different vessels.
Very forcibly are we reminded of this remark of
Bayne's in the present sketch. Up to a certain
point it is biography, pure and simple; then it becomes biography and history in about equal proportions; then once more it returns to biography,
and history disappears? still leaving behind it, like
the rivers of California, golden sands too precious
to remain ungathered.
The good State of Michigan has received the
best of compliments for the excellence of its soldiers in the great war of the Union from that grand
old patriot, Gen. George HT. Thomas. We once
heard a dying Massachusetts officer say that she
"was equally good in infantry, cavalry, artillery,
and the corps of engineers." But high as the compliment was, it does not give her the full meed of
praise that she deserves. The green sash had its
honors as well as the red; the yellow flag its mission as well as the stars and stripes; there were
times when the knife of the surgeon was as indispensable and required as much fortitude in its
proper use as the sword. The writer of this sketch
well remembers a day, after the greatest of all our
battles, as the wounded lay in thousands and the
surgeons were few, when he would willingly have
given up all other kinds of knowledge save one —
to know how to make a proper use of a box of

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surgical instruments. With the modesty of true
science, the results of their labor have been recorded, but too often we are without record as the
danger and cost at which those results were
achieved. Only, then, has biography found its
true use when it possesses the power of transfusing
character into the reader, and where it widens into
history, causing our homage to the nation to transcend our homage to the man. We honor the physician who has bravely maintained his post during
a pestilence, if he lives, as a hero; if he dies, we
lament him as a martyr, and erect an enduring
monument to his fame. Why not similar honor be
given to the hero-surgeons of the war? and among
others, to our modest friend and worthy fellowcitizen, Surgeon Ranney, of the Second Michigan
Cavalry?
In modern sketches of biography we notice that
increasing attention is given to the question of ancestry. As in animals, so in man, there is a general
law of heredity that asserts itself too plainly to be
denied. The time was when Coleridge remarked
that "the history of a man for the nine months preceeding his birth would probably be far more interesting and contain events of greater moment
than all the threescore and ten years that follow
it." It was ridiculed as a speculation far more
curious than useful. But it is so no longer. The
received opinion now is that character is the result
of innumerable infuences from without and from
within, which act unceasingly through life. Who
shall estimate the effects of these latent forces enfolded in the spirit of a new-born child-forces that
may date back centuries, and find their origin in the
life and thought and deeds of remote ancestorsforces, the germs of which, enveloped in the awful
mystery of life, have been transmitted silently
from generation to generation and never perish?
All cherishing Nature, provident and unforgetting,
gathers up all these fragments that nothing may be
lost, but that all may ultimately re-appear in new
combinations. Each new life is thus the heir of all
the ages, the possessor of qualities which only the
events of life can unfold."* Especially in the life
of a physician, to give some particulars concerning

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*Gen. Garfield's Oration on the Life and Character of Gcn. George
H. Thomas, p. 5.