All history should be the history of the people. It is what the people are doing in villages, communities and families, that lie at the foundation of national character, and sentiment, and consequently of national events. Those matters which possess a natural interest to a particular neighborhood, from association with the familiar names and places, are of interest to everyone who seeks in the experience of the past for that wisdom that may be desired from a knowledge of what those who lived before us have done and suffered …
The historic genealogy of a village may be made as useful a guide through the devious paths of life as the chart of the mariner to him who sails among the breakers of the great deep, pointing out the track that others have pursued, and showing where and how they have advanced in safety, and also wherein they have becomes victims of passion, folly and recklessness.
Excerpted from The History of Canaan, New Hampshire by William Allen Wallace and James Burns Wallace. Published by the Rumford Press, Concord, New Hampshire, 1910.