While care has been taken with a view to accuracy to Phineas Upham Geneology, the work goes to the publisher with a foreknowledge that numerous errors must be discovered with the appearance of the book. My hope is, that among the Uphams who will follow so rapidly in the march of the generations, there may be some one who will be sufficiently interested to revise and correct it, and that a more complete genealogy of the posterity may be thus finally obtained.

It may seem remarkable that so many, apparently unimportant and almost trivial facts, matters and incidents have been recorded with the personal notices of individuals. It is believed, however, that these are of more significance than they will, at first thought, seem, inasmuch as the actions, habits of life, movements and expressions of individuals disclose indications of character, and from the knowledge of the character of an ancestor much that influences one’s heredity may be deduced. Probably from a mistaken sense of the fitness of things, and modesty, many are prone to withhold information of this nature concerning themselves or their immediate ancestors — possibly with some feeling that they are too obscure to be of interest ; and this kind of information has been exceedingly hard to obtain. They do not consider the possible interest with which every thing pertaining to their own lives and times may be regarded by their descendants. More of this information would leave less ground for the frequent comment that genealogy is ” only a string of names and dates.”