Mr. Swinnerton immediately assumed a prominent place in the community, being town clerk during both the years of local independence and taking a foremost position in church and Sunday school development. So well satisfied were the voters with his work as town clerk that, when the second annual election was held, and an opposition ticket was put in the field, he received 185 of the 192 votes cast for that office. Mr. Swinnerton has a natural antiquarian bent and, as a consequence, has preserved many memorials and a vivid memory of the past, and such of these as relate to Woodside he has freely put at my disposal, throwing light into many a dark corner. MR. ALBERT BEACH. Mr. Albert Beach was born in Newark and moved to the Bartholf farm on the old Bloomfield road about 1865. He was a kindly man and had a number of boys who were always ready to help along any mischief in which we were interested, and as Mr. Beach himself was much interested in the church we were quite neighborly, boy and man. And then all boys appreciated Mrs. Beach, who was one of those who sensed the fact that a boy’s heart lay next his stomach, and who immediately established close relations with both. The Beach house was overrun with boys a goodly portion of the time, and they were not all Beach boys, either. GEN. GILBERT W. CUMMING. General Gilbert W. Cumming lived on the River road in the old Stimis house. The General’s property came down to the swamp where we boys learned to skate, and his rail fence was a great temptation when a fire was wanted, which was mostly all the time. It is still well remembered how, on such occasions he would come charging down the hill “spitting blue sparks”. The General’s habit of language was acquired in the army, apparently, and it generally sounded as though the army was in Flanders at the time; certainly it was of the pyrotechnic order, and no one could well blame him with such an inciting firebrand as his rail fence became. He was a thoroughly good man, however, and while he had the reputation of being somewhat crusty and quick tempered, he could be quite genial when all things worked together for peace. “He was an old-fashioned lawyer of the Abe Lincoln school.” The General was born March 12, 1817, of Scotch parents, at Stamford, N. Y. He was admitted to the bar in New York, but removed to Chicago in 1858. When the Civil War broke out he offered his services and was appointed Colonel of the 51st Illinois Volunteers, which he was largely instrumental in raising. Under General Pope he participated in the battle of New Madrid, Mo., and while in charge of a brigade on the way to Tiptonville his capture of Island No. 10 against great odds brought him prominently to the front. For this he was made a brigadier-general for “gallant and meritorious services at Island No. 10”.