Michigan historical collections. [Vol. 17]

236

ANNUAL MEETING, 1890.

attachment, and as a specimen, I will repeat one stanza with the chorus
attached:
Unto you, 0 men I call, "Weeping, wailing, groaning;"
Sin-cursed, by means of Adam's fall, weeping, &c.
Christ came to save you, one and all, weeping, &c.
Repent, believe, and heed the call; weeping, &c.
I don't think he was as good a poet as Judge Miller, but I think
he could beat him in the line of singing, for he could sing the lines of
his own composing so as to make them quite entertaining. The dear
old man did find himself mistaken at last, for while he lived to a ripe
old age, he was forced at the last to succumb to the inevitable, and his
body slumbers, as do all the other pioneer ministers named in this
paper, awaiting the sound of the trumpet that shall call them forth
into life immortal; and the last enemy shall be destroyed.
I here recall the name of one Presbyterian minister, Noah Wells,
who was pastor of the Presbyterian church in Detroit, and occasionally
paid a visit to our neighborhood in those early days. During my
second pastorate in Port Huron, in 1847-8, he made his home with
his daughter, Mrs. Boughton, whose husband was a Presbyterian minister, and pastor of the Congregational church in that village at that
time. During those two years I became intimately acquainted with
him, and found in him a true friend to whom I became strongly attached.
Some years afterward he passed from labor to reward, and left an
untarnished record of a life of 90 years, and right here, I am happy
in being able to say, that every man whose name I have mentioned
as among these pioneers now at rest, maintained their integrity, and
left for their posterity the legacy of an untarnished record, which to
their surviving friends is far more precious than silver and gold, even
in large measure. With this fact before us, can we for one moment
believe that these men lived to no purpose? Nay verily; and you and
I may never know while we remain here how much the State of Michigan is indebted to the men I have named in this paper for the work
done by them in laying the foundation upon which our noble State has
been building so grandly for the last half century. One thing is certain. They did their work, and did it well, and we are entered into
their labors so well performed.
In closing permit me to say, I am exceedingly thankful, that it was
my privilege, in my boyhood to look into the faces and listen to the
preaching of the men I have named; and if Col. Ingersoll should ask
me to show him any good that Christianity has ever done in the world,
my answer would not be that which the dear old lady in the railway