“Philo Penfield Stewart, a Pilgrim from the neighboring town of Sherman, illustrates the character and purposes of these early settlers. He went into Ohio in 1832, and, even before his weary body could have rested from the long and tedious journey, he began at once, in connection with Rev. J. R. Shipherd of Elyria, plans for the establishment of a college and colony at Oberlin. It is possible, as history hints, that the first white pioneer into Ohio was Ferdinand De Soto, who possibly pushed his way into the region of this great central State as early as 1539. It is most fortunate, however, that not the descendants of De Soto, but the Pilgrims from New England and their descendants, gave the ideals and formative influences to this new commonwealth. That there should be the least percentage of illiteracy in the northern counties of Ohio, known still as the Western Reserve, of any part of the tabulated world, is not an accident. The schoolhouse was as much a part of their essential requirements as the barn or the shop. When in the height of his wide-reaching influence, Dr. Joseph Cook went once to Cleveland; he carefully studied the conditions of the public schools of the Forest City. He afterwards bore testimony that ‘in coming from Boston, Massachusetts, to Cleveland, Ohio, he came _up_ in the character of the appointments and work in the public schools, and not down’; that ‘the educational system of Cleveland was better than the educational system of Boston.’ Your speaker having had somewhat intimate acquaintance with both systems, would speak an humble word of endorsement to this testimony of Dr. Cook. These Pilgrims from New Milford found mud, homeliness, forest, hardships, toil and privation. But they found opportunity. This opportunity they improved to the best of their ability or of any ability that human beings could command. They planted churches and worshiped within their sacred precincts with loving reverence; they built their schoolhouses and had no lack of teachers, for many of their wives and daughters had been teachers in Old Connecticut. They sent their children to school, sparing them from needed work on the farm or in the shop or store. They did this, because they were building life, character; were establishing a Christian civilization to outlast them and their immediate descendants. They did it, because they believed in God and man and in making the most of life. Better than all, they gathered in their homes around the clear-swept hearth of their open fireplaces, in love, peace, and confidence. Often the crackling fire on the open hearth was the only light that the home possessed for the evening. Sometimes, as we learn from their records, they put melted tallow in a tin basin and hung a bit of cotton wicking over the side to light their humble homes. ‘Two such lanterns,’ they tell us, ‘were sufficient to light up the church for evening service.’ It was almost