One Hundred Years Ago

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 28, 1873

One Hundred Years Ago.

ONE hundred and ten years ago there was not a single white man in Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Then, what is the most flourishing part of America was as little known as the country around the mysterious Mountains of the Moon. It was not until 1776 that Boone left his home in North Carolina to become the first settler in Kentucky. The first pioneers of Ohio did not settle until twenty years after this time.

A hundred years ago, Canada belonged to France, and the population did not exceed a million and a half of people. A hundred years ago, the great Frederic of Prussia was performing those grand exploits which have made him immortal in military annals, and with his little monarchy was sustaining a single-handed contest with Russia, Austria, and France, the three great powers of Europe combined. Washington was a modest Virginia colonel, and the great events of history in the two worlds in which these great but dissimilar men took leading parts were then scarcely foreshadowed. A hundred years ago, the United States were the most loyal part of the British Empire, and on the political horizon no speck indicated the struggle which within a score of years thereafter established the great republic of the world.

A hundred years ago, there were but four newspapers in America; steam-engines had not been imagined, and railroads and telegraphs had not entered into the remotest conception of men. When we come to look at it through the vista of history, we find that to the century just passed have been allotted more important events, in their bearing upon the happiness of the world, than almost any other which has elapsed since the creation.—Selected.