soil, who have faded away. His next inspiration was drawn from books, from his devotion to mental cultivation and to the attainment of an education. His strong, native, vigorous and original mind enabled him to attain mental accomplishments with a facility that gave him an honorable place in those educated circles which he adorned in his future life, tempered by an unassuming demeanor, which, while it avoided pedantic pretension, gave lustre to his life and career. From the common-school of his native village, one of those useful and still venerated institutions of learning in which so many of our great men first learned the rudiments of their education, he entered Moscow Academy, which, after pursuing a profitable course of study, he left to enter the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, at Lima, from whence he graduated, thoroughly prepared with classic endowments, to enter upon the study of his chosen profession. But before entering upon his legal studies he engaged in the great work of teaching school for several years, with a success that placed him high among the educators of his time. Mr. Abbott pursued the occupation of teacher for several years, and finally, with some reluctance, abandoned his work to prepare for that profession which was to be his calling for life. He entered the office of John H. Martindale, then one of the distinguished lawyers of the Genesee bar, and we might say of Western New York, even at that early age. After spending two years with Mr. Martindale, he entered the office of John, afterwards Governor, Young, one of the most accomplished lawyers in Western New York, peerless as a legal orator and unequaled as a parliamentary debater in the Legislature of the State and on the floor of the House of Representatives at Washington. In the office of Governor Young, Mr. Abbott made the acquaintance of James, afterwards General, Wood, a young lawyer, the brilliancy of whose career at the bar is identified with the legal history of Western New York. Mr. Abbott also drew inspirations from his relations with Mr. Wood, which were valuable to him in his practice at the bar, and when they became friendly rivals their friendship seemed to increase until death ended it. Each regarded the other as "a foeman worthy of his steel." In October, 1848, Mr. Abbott was admitted to practice law, and at once decided to unite his professional fortunes with the Livingston County Bar.

Mr. Abbott's mind was excursive, and of so active a nature that it constantly required intellectual aliment. He was very fond of literary pursuits. The field of literature, and to some extent of poetry, was exceedingly attractive to him. Few persons possessed a more chaste and yet active literary taste than Mr Abbott. He was a delightful conversationalist, and he quoted from his readings with spontaneity and much effect. He wrote with versatility, ease, and always with a depth of thought and originality, but his writings he reserved for himself and seldom published what he wrote. Occasionally he would read something he had written to a friend, and I never knew a man, so accomplished in literature as he, with so little vanity, and make so little display of his literary resources.

Soon after his admission to practice, Mr. Abbott opened an office at Dansville, N. Y., having formed a co-partnership with Alexander C. Fraser, an industrious and very able lawyer. This business relation brought fair remuneration to the partners and continued several years, when it was dissolved, and Mr. Fraser removed to Washington, in the

State of Michigan, where he attained an honorable and successful practice. After the dissolution of this firm, Mr. Abbott formed a co-partnership with John Wilkinson, of Dansville, a careful business lawyer, a practitioner, and able representative of that class of the profession known as office lawyers. This partnership was successful and existed eleven years, when it was dissolved, and Mr. Abbott removed to Geneseo, in the year 1859, where he spent the remainder of his life. He soon took a conspicuous and honorable position at the Geneseo Bar. His sphere of action was enlarged and he became one of the leading lawyers of his native county and of Western New York. At Geneseo, Mr. Abbott formed several successful co-partnerships; among his partners were Sidney Ward, now of New York; Augustus A. Curtiss, Edward E. Sill, John N. Drake, Colonel John Rorbach, and his own son, John B. Abbott. Mr. Abbott was engaged as leading counsel in very many cases of importance and trials that were invested with unusual interest in Livingston and other counties of Western New York. Like most lawyers, Mr. Abbott's mind and tastes gravitated towards the political arena, which absorbed much of his attention, time and study. He was familiar with the political history of the past and the present. He learned it by research, by careful investigation and thought; he learned it by looking out upon the political field and watching with keen circumspection the movements and platitudes of political parties and of politicians. But he never aspired to ephemeral honors of official position, neither did he mingle in the petty strifes of conventions, wire-pullers and political gamesters.

He early gave his allegiance to the doctrines, teachings and principles of the Democratic party, maintained them with rare ability and gave uniform abiding adhesion to them through life.

Although Mr. Abbott never aspired to official position, yet such was the confidence his party had in him he was often consulted as to party movements, and was frequently offered representative positions in party conventious, which he rarely accepted. But, when delegates were to be selected for the memorable Democratic Presidential Convention, to be held at Charleston, S. C., he was elected a delegate to that convention from his congressional district. He accepted the position, and the ability with which he discharged his duties as such delegate gained for him the approbation, and I may say the admiration, of his fellow-members in that convention. When this convention was dissolved by the singular division that invaded it, it again met at Baltimore, Md., and here Mr. Abbott resumed his duties as a representative for his fellow-citizens in the State of New York. During the struggle to sustain the Union, Mr. Abbott may be called one of the patriotic pillars of the times. He devoted his energies in enlisting troops, organizing regiments and sending them to the front. His eloquence, his influence and his time were given liberally to the cause, and, when at last the banner of his country was no longer in danger, and the Union was saved, no man rejoiced with deeper joy, or felt more gratitude to Him who holds the destiny of nations in the hollow of His hand.

To repeat what has been said of him by one of his eulogists: "He at one time was elected president of the village of Geneseo. He served for over thirty years as one of the board of trustees of its splendid Wadsworth

library. He was for many years president of the board of trustees of its Union Free School, and it was mainly through his active and persistent efforts that its former District School was merged into the Union Free School system. He was one of the Trustees of the Temple Hill Cemetery Association of Geneseo, to whom, with two or three more, the village is particularly indebted for such a complete and satisfactory change in the resting-place of its dead." Mr. Abbott now sleeps peacefully in this beautiful receptacle for the dead, in an honored grave.

Is is pleasant to remember Mr. Abbott as a citizen and friend. While there were a quiet reserve and unassumed dignity in his manner, often taken for a kind of haughtiness, it was more a shading of one of the most delightful minds that ever kindled with friendship and affection. On a near acquaintance this passed away, as we have often seen a cloud pass from the rays of the sun, leaving it to illumine all objects around it.

His

We have already said Mr. Abbott was a delightful conversationalist. This attribute was the result of a mind invigorated, enlarged and rendered flexible by a careful study of the beautiful productions of the best poets in ancient and modern times. It would have taken but little to make him an acceptable poet and writer; indeed, as we have already said, he did write poetry, that would have illuminated the literature of the times. writing was the offspring of a mind too full not to give utterance to its musings and reflections. He did more, he quoted poetry, with a fervor and eloquence that reminded one of the utterances of a Booth or a Forrest. He had many ïavorites among the British poets, and among them all Byron was the chief. He used to say he rose to a greater poetic height than any other poet until we come to the immortal Shakespeare. He felt the truth of Pollock's tribute:

"Byron touched his harp,

And nations heard entranced."

To Mr. Abbott other poems seemed poor and dull by the side of the prodigality of accumulated splendors of Childe Harold.

His domestic life was all that might well be expected from a man of his tender and affectionate nature. There was in it a concentration of love-the embodiment of all that enters into the sacredness and beauty of domestic life. The happiness of his home-life was intensified by his union with a woman in every sense worthy to become the wife of such a man. In 1848 he was united in marriage to Miss Mary Jane Beach. This union was blest by the birth of several children, all of whom were removed from their parents by death, excepting one, who survives him. We allude to John B. Abbott, who was a son, a companion and a co-partner in the practice of law, upon whose counsel and assistance he largely relied, and who sustained him as the labors of his professional life were drawing to a close, fading into the years that saw the sun of his life gradually decline until at last all that was mortal of him passed peacefully to the tomb. His death occurred April 8, 1898. We contemplate his approach to the grave with feelings so beautifully described by the poet Young:

"The chamber where the good man meets his fate,

Is privileged beyond the common walk

Of virtuous life, quite in the verge of heav'n."

We have thus glanced over the long and interesting career of one who, if he did not hold the most conspicuous place in life, occupied one that cannot and ought not to be easily forgotten or passed by with indifference. Its lessons are salutary; its example and influence valuable, and its whole detail a rich tribute to the biographical history of the legal profession, not only of Livingston County but of Western New York.

CARROLL H. COCHER.

BY HON. ARCHIBALD KENNEDY.

It is a fact frequently verified in human history and experience that the results of our most diligent and persevering efforts are too often appropriated and enjoyed at last by the unthankful and undeserving. The pioneer of a great enterprise or the revealer of an important discovery, although permitted to wear the shallow honor of a public benefactor, but rarely receives the reward to which his genius and forethought entitle him. This thought has been suggested by the life and recent death of Carroll H. Cocher, of Greigsville, N. Y., whose death occurred at the General Hospital, in the City of Buffalo, on the 23d of April, 1898. Mr. Cocher was born in the town of Groveland, on the 29th of October, 1826, and was named by and for Judge Carroll, then a most worthy and distinguished resident of that town, whom the citizens of Livingston County were always delighted to honor. At the age of twenty-five, in 1851, Mr. Cocher was married, in Batavia, to Miss Maria Lathrop, of Livonia.

Much of his early life was spent in the towns of Covington and Perry, Wyoming County, and in Livonia and Geneseo, Livingston County, where, at the age of eighteen, he took up and followed for several years the trade of a stone mason, in the pursuit of which he soon acquired an enviable reputation for his genius and skill as a master workman. He was present at the great fire in Geneseo forty years ago, and rendered efficient help and service in subduing the flames and in the protection of property lying in the track of the fiery element.

In 1849, he took up his residence in Greigsville, where the balance of his days were spent. Here his real life-work began, developed, and in the best and highest sense successfully culminated.

Mr. Cocher was a born geologist. When a boy at school, Geometry and Geology were his favorite text-books. He examined with the greatest interest and the closest scrutiny every work that came within his reach touching the various formations underlying the surface of the earth. There was hardly a ravine or a rugged rock within miles of his home that he had not studied and explored. He seemed to grasp as if by intuition geological facts which cost the ordinary student much patient and laborious investigation.

It was he who first not only conceived the idea but by clever reasoning demonstrated the fact to his own satisfaction that underlying the Genesee Valley there was a large deposit of salt. Although controverting the theories of learned State Geologists, who claimed that salt in paying quantities was nowhere to be found in Western New York, and in defiance of the taunts and jeers of his unbelieving neighbors and friends who denounced him as a fanatic and a crank, he clung to his contention with unshaken faith.

After his own limited means were wholly exhausted, by continued and persistent effort, a company was finally organized, and the first well in the valley was put down, which, at the depth of a thousand feet, registered nearly sixty feet of pure, unadulterated rock salt. Thus the great fact was at last fully demonstrated, and the claim of Mr. Cocher proven and established beyond all controversy.

At this point (always at this point), the worthy and deserving projector of the grand enterprise, with all its promising possibilities, poor and penniless, steps out, and wily capital steps in, to gather and enjoy the fruits of his tireless energy and toil.

Only a short time before his death, Mr. Cocher told the writer that all he had ever received by way of compensation for the years of arduous and patient service he had rendered in this entire matter, was two cigars. But however he may have been ignored in the past, and his rightful claim as the founder and champion of a vast industry passed without recognition, it cannot be successfully denied that all that has been thus far done and accomplished, is but the natural development of the single idea to which his brain gave birth. Impartial history will yet do justice to the meek and modest man who laid the foundations upon which others are now building. The heretofore quiet valley is now dotted with flourishing industries his innate genius inaugurated, each one representing the triumphant development of a single thought, and in time to come every saltplant that will spring up and every salt-shaft that may go down will be looked upon as a standing memorial to the insight and foresight of Carroll H. Cocher.

DANIEL MCPHERSON.

BY WILLIAM HAMILTON.

Daniel McPherson, of York, third son of Daniel McPherson and Jane Calder, descendants of Scotland, was born Oct. 21, 1834. Raised on a farm and educated at the common school, and one winter at Fairfield, Herkimer County. Married to Anna M. Wood. of Woodport, Morris Co., N. J., October 3, 1871, who, with a daughter, Mrs. Anna Low, survive him.