The basis of all the incidents rests upon the best authority. In most cases the Colonial Record 5, the Pennsylvania Archives and the collections of the Pennsylvania Historical Society have furnished the data. Most of the sketches deal with colonial life, because the indi vidual, the hero, for whom the young have most regard, grows less prominent in the increasingly complex social and institutional life of the state. The reader will prize all the more his own rich social, political, educational, and religious environment after be coming familiar with the struggles of an ancestry not so highly favored. The complex life of to-day will be more clearly com prehended from a view of the initial forces producing it.