In an age of progress like the present, when marvelous discoveries in Arts and Science are almost daily being made, and events crowd one on the other in rapid succession, there is every possibility of much that is past and gone being lost and forgotten in the vortex of a busy strenuous life.

    Man is now inclined to live, so to speak, less in the past and more in the future, to throw his gaze forward, and give little or no thought of the eventual, aye! glorious, days that are gone.

    It is to correct such a tendency, or rather, to preserve such traditions and history of a local colouring, that historical societies have been formed in many places, thro’ whose activities much of particular and general interest has been exhumed from the buried past, and placed in easy accessible form for those who would wish to know how their fathers lived, - what disadvantages they had to struggle against, - what encouragements and hopes to cheer them.

    How intensely interesting, - if it could only be gathered together, - would be the history in all its varied details, of the settlers of the fair village of Kingston, and of parts adjacent; those brave, true, loyal hearts, who, true in their allegiance to God and their King, parted with relatives, friends and neighbours, - their farms, their means of winning comfortable livelihood, - their all, and came to a virtually terra ignota, - bleak, barren, gloomy, to carve out in a forest primeval a fortune by sheer labour of hand and brain and brawn, sustained solely by the strong hearts that beat within their breasts, - hearts staid and trusting in the Lord.

    It came into the mind of William S. Carter Esq., Inspector of Schools for the City and County of Saint John and elsewhere, - a native born and bread in this village of Kingston, that now if ever, was the time to attempt such a work by the formation of an Historical Society.

 

The society was organized accordingly, and the following officers chosen:

 

Honourary President – William S. Carter, Inspector etc.

President – Justus Pickett, J.P.

1st Vice President – George Bruce, Yeoman

2nd Vice President – Lezia Elizabeth Northrup

Secretary – Hastings Stowe Wainwright

Assistant Secretary – Muriel Gray Wainwright