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 stirring events in Tryon County during the Revolution. Stone wrote the biography of Brant as might one who loved Brant and honored his memory. Simms gathered into his several publications an extensive and curious array of material. Jay Gould, when still under age, revived much that Campbell and Simms had brought to light, and added other valuable information. Cooper, with accuracy and fulness, recorded the annals of the settlement developed by his father on Otsego Lake, all of which Cooper himself may be said to have seen and a large part of which he afterward was.

Some of these and other chronicles were printed sixty or more years ago. They all long since had passed out of print and out of the convenient reach of purchasers, some of them being now very scarce books. At the time of their publication, moreover, a large store of important material, printed and unprinted, which is now to be found in State archives and in libraries, was either inaccessible, or for other reasons was not drawn upon.