Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 38, number 4, summer, 1955

              It was pleasant to hear Dr. Quaife re¬ count some of his experiences of forty years ago as superintendent of the So¬ ciety, at the breakfast on June 26, 1954, in the delightful environment of the Me¬ morial Union Terrace on Lake Mendota. He was one of the guests who attended the Annual Meeting and other functions of the Draper Centennial year, where he had an opportunity to meet his old friends and to recall "other days" with his former staff.
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Dr. Quaife
Some Memories of Forty Years
bi^ M. M. Quaife
You are now commemorating the centennial year of Lyman Copeland Draper's official con¬ nection with the State Historical Society. I arrived in Madison on January 1, 1914, forty and one-half years ago. Hence my memories cover almost half the entire century that has elapsed since 1854. In 1914 there were stifl men and women whose mature lives antedated the founding of the Society. One of them was W. A. P. Morris, stifl practicing law, the only real son of the Revolution I have known. His father was an officer in Washington's army, and a friend and champion of General Lee. Mr. Morris still had a pair of pistols which had been given to his father by the General. Another was Professor John B. Parkinson, who had been a California forty-niner, and who subsequently related his gold seeking memories to me for publication in the Maga¬ zine. Still another was Lucien S. Hanks, vet¬ eran treasurer of the Society, who believed himself to be the oldest banker, in point of years of service, in Wisconsin. He also credited himself with the adoption of the architectural plan of the Library Buflding.
During my stay at Madison, I recafl that Bishop Bashford, a notable educator and leader of the Methodist Church, died, and the New York Christian Advocate published an extensive commentary upon his career. The author of the article stated, however, that he had no information concerning the Bishop's
parentage and early life. As it chanced, we had recently obtained for the library the manuscript returns for Wisconsin of the census of 1850 to 1880, possibly the most important single manuscript acquisition ever made by the Society. The census of 1850 marked the first attempt by the government to compfle the varied industrial and personal data with which we are now familiar. Knowing the Bishop's birthplace in southern Wisconsin, I turned to the 1850 record concerning his father's family. There on a single line run¬ ning across two broad pages was a complete tabular picture of the family's background and economic status. Transposing the data into narrative form I sent it to the Advocate to serve as an addition to the account of the Bishop's career that had been published. A few weeks later a young woman came to my office and introduced herself as a student in the Uni¬ versity and as a niece of the Bishop's widow. She stated that her aunt in California had read my article and had asked her to cafl upon me and learn what more I might know concerning her deceased husband. Regretfully I was compelled to answer that I knew nothing more since I had put into the short article everything the census record contained.
Having introduced the manuscript census returns, it wifl be in 'order to go further. For all Wisconsin famflies having a nineteenth century background they constitute an indis-
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