In many instances, whole families came together, as will be noticed in the list of names given above, as having come before 1840. The most noted of them was that of the Rev. William Best, with his five sons and a daughter Charlotte Best Finlay, who with her husband accompanied them. The Reverend Best became a prominent minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Illinois and lived to a ripe old age, to see his family all successful in worldly affairs. His youngest son Joseph served as adjutant of the Twenty-first Missouri Infantry in the Union army; the other sons being over the military age supported the cause at home. His grandsons and great grandsons are now among our best business men. A grandson, John H. Best, has served as mayor of Quincy and is now president of one of our banks, a stockholder and director in nearly every corporation doing business here; also a large land owner in Illinois, Missouri, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, while his brother, Ezra Best, is president of the Best Plumbing and Steam Heating Company, one of the largest and most successful in the West. Both brothers coöperate and invest together. They are model citizens and have the respect and confidence of all our people. The Finlay family, Rev. William B., James B., Matthew B., with their three sisters, Ann B. Padgett, Jane B. and Mary B. Finlay, became equally prominent. They came to America with the Best family in 1839, from County Cavan, Ireland. The Rev. William B. Finlay was an ardent church worker, and a school teacher in Ireland. His father, before him, was a school teacher and a member of the English church. His mother was a primitive Methodist and a member of the Bell family, hence the initial “B” was retained by the brothers and sisters. He had his religious training under such noted ministers as Rev. G. B. Moffatt, Doctor Averill and Gideon Ousley, D. D., a converted priest, who generally preached a part of his sermons in Irish. In his twentieth year, his father having died in 1829, the Rev. William Bell Finlay took charge of his father’s old parish school. In 1830 he attended the Kildare College in Dublin. He afterwards served five years as a government teacher, from which he resigned to accept charge of a school in the Parish of Tyholland, County Monaghan, where he married Charlotte Best and united with the Methodist Church. He remained at Tyholland, teaching and as an exhortor, until he started for Quincy, where he arrived June sixth, 1839, and the following Sunday united with the Methodist Church. He was licensed to exhort in September of that year, and in 1849 was ordained by Bishop Janes when the conference met at Quincy. The year before he died, he prepared a little sketch of his life work, which was found by his children after his death. The last paragraph, which we quote, shows that his was a beautiful Christian life: “So I am now in my eighty-ninth year, and an official member of the old Illinois Conference, still in