To Seek The Smiles of Dame Fortune

Most of the fifteen men and one woman chronicled in this work did not achieve the pinnacle of the hopes they held dear and may be looked upon as mere anecdotes in the larger scheme of history and the era in which they lived. But, for their very real everyday lives they advanced the possibilities of the world to which they were born. What was unapparent at the time, but manifest later, was that their attempts, their labors for something better, benefited the community in which they lived even without their understanding and even if it did not elevate substantially their own lives. Progress, whether personal or larger, is incremental. What often seems just a moment in time in historical review, is often the movement of change on a grander scale. Such it was for the men who brought their wealth, whether great or small, and their experiences back with them from the frozen north to the small town along the shores of the Stillaguamish River where they lived out their days.