our mountain work, using the big map, a couple of ladies came forward
and introduced themselves as descendants of John Sevier, the Huguenot
"commonwealth builder" in the mountains of Tennessee, the hero of King's
Mountain, as I had represented him to be. One of the ladies was Mrs.
Knickerbocker, her husband being one of the most respected citizens of
that place--his own stock being that indicated by his name. She is now,
as she has been for many years, the lady principal of the college in
that town connected with the Evangelical Association Church. Her mother
was a Sevier and her father, Rev. John Cunningham, a Presbyterian
minister from Jonesboro, East Tennessee, who came early to Illinois to
get away from slavery, and who served acceptably that Congregational
Church of Naperville. She was a granddaughter of John Sevier. The other
descendant was Miss Sevier, a great-great-granddaughter, a cultivated
young lady, who was a teacher in a college in Ohio.

It was at least a noticeable coincidence that out here upon these
western prairies two of those worthy representatives should confront the
preacher, who found his response to be, "Well, I didn't say anything bad
about John Sevier, did I?" What a grand coalescing of blood was that
which in the gathering of our nation brought Knickerbocker and Huguenot,
Scotch, Irish and English and Germans, with congenial Danes and Swedes,
into our people's life. It was also a bond of union, North and South,
too strong to be separated by civil strife. It is an element in the
make-up of the South that will ever be a conservative force in behalf of
theology, of law and order, of Puritan institutions.

* * * * *

PROMISING OPENINGS FOR SCHOOL AND CHURCH.