Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/213

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THE

��GRANITE MONTHLY.

A JS'EW HAMPSHIRE MAG^IZIXE

Devoted to Literature, Biography, History, and State Progress.

��Vol. VIII.

��JULY A^n AUGUST, 1885.

��Nos. VII., VIII.

��THE ARMSTRONG CLAN.— GEORGE W. ARMSTRONG.

By Leonard A. Morrison, A.M.

��It is a source of great profit and pleasure to study the characters and lives of those individuals who stand forth in bold relief as leaders in the sacred calling, in literature, in politics, and in the stern competition and activ- ities of business life. It is a delight to follow them in their honorable struggles from the small commencement till suc- cess has crowned the efforts of a life- time, — thus witnessing the daily strife and the final triumph.

But the history of no individual is fully written by the mere announcement of the details of his own personal bi- ography. As one's influence reaches forward into futurity, so one's history may be said to stretch backward, beyond his own personal existence, into the generations of his predeces- sors.

There must be taken into account the mysterious influences received from generations of ancestors, and which, in a large degree, have made him consti- tutionally, physically, and mentally the

��person he was, or is. So the history of the race to which he belongs must be studied and described ; the lineage traced " from ihe time the memory of man runneth not to the contrary until now," thus showing the characteristics of different generations, and the influence of politics and civil and religious com- motions in changing the lives and actions of a family.

This article will show the process of the transformation and development, through successive generations, of the sturdy, persistent, pugnacious Scotch- man into the active, equally persistent, broader- minded, and successful man, and public-spirited American citizen.

In a belt of country in the southern part of Scotland, near the border of England, and now embraced in the counties of Dumfries and Roxburgh, once dwelt some of the most renowned of the Scottish Lowland clans, among whom were the clans Johnston, Elliott, Douglass, Maxwell, Chisholm, ajid Armstrong.

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