In volume i  of these Publications, at pages 52, 53 and 199, allusion is made to Mr. Job Hoisington (there spelled less correctly, Hoysington) and a full account is given of the circumstances of his death, and the discovery of his remains. The publication of these stories of the olden time serves to link the early days with the present, and to call up in the minds of those perhaps far away from the places where the events which they narrate occurred, associations which give life to the “Dead Past.” To illustrate this, and add interest to the poem here given, it is suitable to quote a paragraph from a letter to the editor, by Lyman C. Draper, LL.D., of Madison, Wisconsin, Corresponding Secretary of the Wisconsin State Historical Society. He says: “I am delighted with your volume of publications. It does great credit to your Society, and to those who have shared in its production. My maternal grandfather, Job Hoisington, is worthily mentioned; his oldest daughter, my mother, is yet spared, at the age of eighty-five.”

But the story itself of the tragic end of Mr. Hoisington did not escape the fate of many another similar one in those earlier days; since it, like for instance, that of the crime and execution of the Three Thayers (see volume i, page 122) fell into the hands of an elegiac poet. He did upon it a (rhymed) execution, – inflicted upon it a (poetic) violence,  – rivalling that suffered by the person whose decease was bewailed, or – celebrated. These primitive effusions of the Muse became household words with the people of that generation, now nearly passed away; many of whom, as for instance the late Mrs. Dr. John E. Marshall, mother of Orsamus H. Marshall, Esq ., could repeat them verbatim et literatim. It is fitting that amid the ordinary utterances of historians, in prose, the “fine phrenzy” of those poetically inclined should now and then find expression in these grave pages.

The poem is here reprinted from an ancient copy, without date, in the possession of the Society. An endorsement states that this copy was “preserved by Heman B. Potter, Esq.; and by his daughter, Mrs. George R. Babcock, presented to the Buffalo Historical Society.”

The original heading of the poem is reproduced below, as nearly as the modern resources of the printer’s art allow. An ornamental head – piece, in the original, is very appropriately composed of Death’s – heads and cross – bones, according well with the subject and the remarkable reflections of the poem itself. – Ed.