At Harvard was located a hotel owned by Elbridge G. Ayer,[93] the father of Edward E. Ayer of this city. This hotel was a few feet from the track and its dining-room furnished meals to the people traveling on that road. This dining-room was known all over the West, for at that time there was no other that could compete with it. All the vegetables, meat, poultry, and pastry were cooked in the most appetizing manner and the products furnished for the table came fresh from Mr. Ayer’s farm. My father and mother, my brother Will, and I have often taken meals at this hotel on our way from the Junction to the lake. The village of Harvard was afterward beautified by Mr. Ayer’s son, Edward E. Ayer, who planted fourteen hundred trees about it. Most of these are standing today and are an evidence of the public spirit of the donor, which is seen in Chicago in his activities in behalf of the Newberry Library, Field Museum, and other institutions.[94] My grandmother’s brother, James Drew, a wealthy barrister from London, England, and his wife visited his sister at the head of the lake in 1842. At this time Mrs. Drew made a small water-color drawing of the house and its vicinity which has recently been placed in the Wisconsin Historical Library. My recollections of Geneva go back to the early fifties. I can remember going with my uncle in a rowboat from the head to the foot of the lake, some eight miles. At that time there were no steamboats on the lake and an unbroken forest covered its shores. The high ground bordering the lake was about 175 feet above the beach line. The depth of the lake has since been found to be from 80 to 181 feet. The lake is eight miles long and from one to two miles wide. It empties into the Fox River by a deep creek at the east end. My mother, Ann Hamilton Reid, daughter of William Reid, was born in Glasgow, Scotland, October 23, 1823. She was married to my father, George Manierre, after whom I was named, in Detroit in 1842. [83] The author’s reminiscences of the Manierre family have been printed in Volume 8 Number 3 of the Illinois State Historical Society _Publications_. [84] James Van Slyke made the first settlement near the Potawatomi Indian village in that place which later became the town of Walworth. He built a cabin and moved his family there from Geneva in the fall of 1836. Mrs. Van Slyke is supposed to have been the only white woman who spent that winter there. Many stories are told of the courage she displayed in this frontier community. [85] Matthias Mohr was one of the earliest residents of Walworth County, settling on part of the Van Slyke claim at the head of Lake Geneva in 1837. He later went to Kansas where he died in 1887. Glenwood Springs Park now stands on the site of his farm.