which prompts interest in our family reunions, means, when directed through the agencies of these family gatherings and of societies for the furtherance of genealogical investigation, not merely the conscious possession of a common ancestor about whose life we have learned to know a little, but the realization that by physical, perhaps by mental inheritance, we belong to a special human circle, whose aims and purposes should be of chief concern to us.

Its members reproduce, though in lessened degree, the qualities that we have learned to love in the persons of our more narrow family group. They have, it may be, the same traits of character, the same habits of mind and action as ourselves. In the study of their ancestry they have the same intimate record of human history before them, personal to them, as to ourselves. The same virtues, the same faults, are, in these records, theirs for study and contemplation, as genealogical investigation brings to light increasing data.

Out of these records, by emphasis and adaptation and idealization of past virtues, and by these meetings with present kindred, to "mend what flaws may lurk," to work in harmony and assist in shaping from among our diversified individual interests common ideals, helpful to the family, distinctive of it, yet of value to the larger communities of which the scattered members of the family form a part-this would be one, but the most important phase of loyalty to our ancestors.

A large family, whose members, though widely separated, possess such a common sentiment, contains within it great possibilities for usefulness and for the furtherance of successful individual effort among its members. It is the immediate family circle given larger

powers, the school also in which the broader civic, national and human virtues, may be best nourished and taught. It is said that love begins at home, but, as the home widens to include ever larger circles of our kindred, it becomes by imperceptible degrees the full measure of that chief of Christian virtues which knows no kinship of the flesh.

In this belief and with the conviction that, through a regularly organized society, our loyalty to our own family would more readily find outward expression and bring into helpful and pleasant association those who bear the Tower name, the "Tower Genealogical Society" was organized, and now offers its members and all who claim kinship with them this brief retrospective survey of its beginning, in the hope and confidence that, through their loyalty, its successful progress is assured.

Doubtless all members of the family whom these reports will reach, know of the "Tower Genealogy," published years before the inception of the present undertaking, and for which the Society makes grateful acknowledgment in this report. There is, therefore, no occasion to point out that there is ample scope for our interest in the ancestry of that sturdy pioneer, John Tower, whose surname we bear, and many of whose qualities we might well be glad to call our own. That we exist in sufficient numbers for such a work is attested by a long roll of names of which we may well be proud.

To those who responded so loyally to the "Calls" for the Reunion these reports will serve as a reminder of the never-to-be-forgotten feeling with which they mingled in crowds of men and women, and realized that all these were their kindred. To the less fortunate, but,

we believe, no less loyal, absentee it will, we hope, be welcome, not only as a record of events which have taken place in his family, but as a fourth invitation to join us in common effort, as a guide to the means by which this may be accomplished, and, as to all our family who will stand "By the Name of Tower," a Cordial Greeting.

Report of the John Tower Ter-Centenary Celebration and Tower Reunion

66

AT HINGHAM, MASS.,

May 29, 30 and 31, 1909.

The three hundredth anniversary of the birth of John Tower (1)" at Hingham, in the county of Norfolk, England, on the fourteenth of May, 1609, was the occasion of the gathering of many hundreds of his descendants at the "Old Homestead" which he had established at Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1664, twenty-seven years after he had cast in his lot with other venturesome spirits and sailed to these New England shores.

That you may understand how this could be brought about -how such an assemblage of widely scattered members of one family could be brought together, it is only needful to say that the sentiment of filial devotion among our people quickly asserted itself when a call to gather at the home of their ancestor reached them.

Beginnings are always difficult and "in some things it is more hard to attempt than to achieve." In the present instance, the initial step once taken, achievement quickly followed. The story of that initial step is soon told, though years of devotion to the idea of uniting the members of the family preceded its taking.

Soon after the publication of the "Tower Genealogy" by the late Hon. Charlemagne Tower in 1890, Mr. George Warren Tower, one of the John Tower descendants, whose interest in those of the name in and about Boston had been awakened, visited the old home in Hingham, Massachusetts. Subsequently