Harvey Reid, the diarist, typifies the choicest product of our American civilization. It was not given to him to play a prominent rôle in the drama of his time. Instead, he belonged to the great mass of Americans, of whom, as individuals, posterity will retain no memory. But he was honest, industrious, and loyal, faithful to his country alike in military and in civil life. Although his education was limited to the district school, and to the ten-weeks’ preparatory course at the University of Wisconsin covered by the diary, he retained a lifelong interest in educational affairs, laboring effectively for many years as school director and library trustee. His intellectual vigor is attested by the fact that after reaching his sixtieth year he began and diligently pursued the study of geology. In the historical field two substantial volumes stand to his credit--a biography of Enoch Long, published by the Chicago Historical Society, and one of Thomas Cox, published by the State Historical Society of Iowa. Reid was born in Washington County, New York, March 30, 1842, of Scotch-Irish ancestry. When two years of age he was taken by his parents to Wisconsin, the journey being made by way of the Erie Canal and then around the Lakes to Racine, which was reached in June, 1844. The elder Reid shortly removed to Yorkville, and several years later to Union Corners (now Union Grove) in Racine County. Thus Reid grew to manhood in pioneer Wisconsin, and became in the fullest sense a product of the Badger State. In 1859, at the age of seventeen, he began teaching school in an adjoining district at a salary of twenty dollars a month. A second winter was passed in the same way (the summers being devoted to helping his father), and then, in the spring of 1861, came the prized opportunity of ten weeks’ schooling at the state university. How fully the young man improved it the pages of the diary reveal.