Biography not only possesses the advantages of general history, but often brings to light the springs of great events which, in the comprehensive range of history, would have escaped attention. Biography is the analysis of history; history is the synthesis of biography. All the great historians in the world have used biography freely in their histories; and to read history without regard to biography is to make it unintelligible. Biographical history is history by induction, which is the natural and philosophical method. It is far more complete in its scope than the mere chronicling of public events, for in it is contained all the elements of human progress, together with the groupings of history and the minutia of biography. The history of any nation, State or country is best and most forcibly written in the life records of its energetic and enterprising citizens, and the Congress of the United States, in view of this, in 1876, recommended to State and county authorities the importance and necessity of collecting and preserving the histories and biographies of their prominent men and useful citizens.<br><br>Nothing, however, was done in the counties of the Keystone State toward the collection of biographical history, beyond securing a few sketches of public men who had passed away, until 1889, when the publisher of this work compiled and published the first cyclopædia of biographies that was ever issued in Pennsylvania. In Indiana and in Armstrong, as in all other counties of this great Union, the present generation has but little history of past generations except what is furnished by tradition, which is the most uncertain and unreliable method in the world of transmitting ancestral history.