ROLLIN, - Among the oldest families of Ohio, and of this county, is that of Horace Judson Rollin. Four generations have occupied the picturesque homestead, midway between Piqua and Troy.

Josiah Rollin, with his aged mother, came from New England in 1815, after some service in the War of 1812. His canteen still adorns the ancestral hall; and here is his large fireplace, with its crane, broad stone hearth and great mantel, under a part of which is a large enclosed bake-oven. With him came his son Isaac, then a lad old enough to reap wheat and pull flax, and who in time became a representative farmer. He was among the first to use the reaping machine and to manufacture molasses from cane, southern production being checked by the Civil War. One of the supporters of Fremont who was called an "Abolitionist,," he long perceived the rising tide which was to overwhelm the institution of slavery. Isaac T. Rollin was public-spirited, belonging to that class of citizens who made Miami County what it is. He passed away in 1890, aged eighty-six.

Five of the six sons, including Horace, then not grown, served in the Union army. The eldest, Charles, who was among the first to enlist, April, 1861, in the Eleventh Regiment, and among the last mustered out, January, 1866, with the Seventy-first, commanded a company in the latter part of the war. At his burial, the late Hon. E. S. Williams, a fellow Officer, in his eulogy, said, "What is rare, he respected the private soldier as much as the officer, and his men loved to serve under him. I knew this man in the camp, on the march, and on the battle-field; Charlie Rollin was every inch a soldier."

The mother, Eleanor H. Rollin, who died in 1895, aged eighty- seven, came to Troy in 1812, with her father, a member of the patriotic Hart family of New Jersey, to which belonged the signer of the Declaration of Independence, John Hart. This stock gave good men, including notable officers (her cousin, the gallant Col. J. H. Hart, was wounded at Nashville) to the Federal army and to civil service.

The name Rollin was early identified with the Northwest Territory. Jonathan, elder brother of Josiah, after campaigning with Wayne, was in the first group of settlers here, 1797. And so of the name, it is among the oldest appearing in the annals of America. James Rawlins came from England with the Ipswich settlers in 1632. It has been a fixed surname there for about seven hundred years; some representatives were knighted, and these are the arms granted by Edward IV. to the Cornwall family, of which the above old James of Dover was a member: "Shield sable, three swords paleways, points in chief, argent; hilts and pommels gold. Crest, an armored arm, elbow on wreath, holding in gauntlet a falchion." Similar arms denoting consanguinity, were granted the, ancient Hertfordshire and other branches. "As a thing associated with caste," Mr. Rollin declares, like a true American, "it is not worth a fig; as evidence of an early fair degree of intelligence, it has some value. In America the spelling of the name was changed before the Revolution to Rollins, and some now drop the "s." In England it has been Rawlin and Rawlyn, and still more anciently probably Rawle.

In 1656 old James was prosecuted for neglect of coming into "ye public meeting and sentenced to pay court fees, two shillings and six pence." He found the church narrow, for he was before the General Court at Boston among the persons "yt entertayned ye Quakers;" but he, being more ingenious than the rest in his replies, "was ordered to be only admonished by ye bonnored Gouernor, wch was donne."

Joseph, the great-grandfather of Horace was a soldier of the Revolution, and was at Saratoga. A cousin, Lieutenant Rollins, was at Warren's side when he fell at Bunker Hill; and about twenty of the name, served in that war. Recently in the Union army, there were enough of the dependants of old James to have formed a large battalion, including some distinguished officers - probably including Grant's chief- of-staff, later secretary of war, General Rawlins. Ex-governor Frank Rollins of New Hampshire belongs to this family, as did an earlier Federal senator.

About forty years ago an extensive book of genealogy was compiled, which shows that this family comprises, by direct relationship, or by marriage alliance, many prominent names, as Emerson, Paine, Lincoln, Hale, Putnam, Phillips, Prescott, and scores more or less notable.

Mrs. Rollin was Nancy E. Bridge, of Cincinnati, formerly a teacher in the public schools. John Bridge, her ancestor, came from England in 1631, settling at Cambridge, Mass., on land once the site of Washington's headquarters and the Longfellow homestead. He induced Thomas Shepherd, one of the founders of Harvard College, to join the colonists - there is a bronze statue of Bridge facing the college grounds. President Garfield was one of his descendants. The long line includes soldiers, statesmen, educators and Unitarian ministers. Revolutionary annals show noble patriots:

"John Danforth was hit just in Lexington Street, John Bridge at that lane where you cross Beaver Falls. I took Bridge on my knee, but he said I Don't mind me; Fill your horn from mine-let me lie were I be - Our fathers,' says he, 'that their sons might be free, Left their King on his throne and came over the sea; And that man is a knave or a fool who to save His life for a minute would live like a slave."

This ancestor was a major and was at Bunker Hill. Col. Eb. Bridge commanded a regiment and served through the war. Rev. Mathew Bridge was among the first chaplains and died in the Revolution.

Mrs. Rollin is eligible also on the mother's side to membership in certain Colonial and Revolutionary societies; her great-grandfather Gates was a soldier, and married a daughter of his captain, Winch. Her grandmother Bridge was a Morse, to which family belonged Prof. Morse, inventor of the telegraph. Horatio Bridge was a friend of Hawthorne ("Dear Hath"), and when the writer was struggling for even a moderate income stood guarantor for the cost of publishing Twice Told Tales.

Mr. Rollin is a painter, and among the lovers of Art who purchased his works appear the names of the late Henry Howe, historian, the Hon. Whitelaw Reid, the late Rabbi Lillienthal, and others well known. His "Old Lane" was shown on the line of the National Academy. " Mother's Spinning wheel," once well sold, was returned to him before the owner passed away, and can now be seen by callers; as can certain moonlight studies. A Miami County pastoral, painted out of-doors, elicited a letter from Mr. Noble, long the head of the Cincinnati Art School (after study at Paris and Munich. This is introduced to help those who imagine foreign study necessary, an applies to other pursuits): "

Now, I must tell you my thoughts while looking at it: 'By Jove! that's a charming picture - so fresh, so free from conventionisrn, so utterly natural. I advised Rollin to go to Paris (where he is sure to become a mannerist, copying the style of others because it is the fashion for those who go there to do so). Now I reverse my opinion. Let him alone with Nature and his own nature, which is so honest and true. He will be better uninfluenced by others, let them be ever so good in their way, for their way is not his way, his being in keeping with his own nature, and his way of seeing Nature, and the rendering of it to be true to his own impressions."

He is the author of "Studio, Field and Gallery," published by the Appletons, a book which received such line reviews from great journals that Mr. Appleton sent a congratulatory letter. Another book, "Yetta Segal," is a story with a deep, peculiar motive, as the publisher's announcement indicates: "This work embodies a new and comprehensive theory of race blending. Mr. Rollin is doubtless the first to formulate a philosophy showing the movement to be evolutionary, universal and destined to culminate in the cosmopolite of the future. But while he shows it to be based on purely biological laws, he warns pioneer movers of the dangers to them.

The great cyclopedias and the text-books of ethnology and biology either omit the subject or treat it in a fragmentary and inconclusive way, although there are several hundred million known racial composites, including the beautiful and intellectual. Moreover the movement is spontaneously increasing; therefore science and reason must decide whether it is abnormal, morbid and temporary, or normal and inevitable. Mr. Rollin declares the latter and that the key-note is the compensative: in the interchange needed values are given and received; even the less developed type, from another environment, has some element of strength peculiar to itself to impart, mental, physical or psychical. The more advanced may, have deteriorated at some points, or may be naturally lacking in certain qualities necessary to the future symmetrical man. It is simply a phase of evolution. Man's organization becomes more and more complex. This author (declared to be "rarely original") waited many years for authoritative endorsement. Recently Prof. Boaz, lecturing at Columbia University, declared that we -those of advanced type- not only embody the blood of the ancient Moligol but also that of the primitive Negroid!

Nine years, after the date of Yetta Segal (whose author had held the belief, in cruder formulation, for about twelve years) came the first book of Luther Burbank: "Training of the Human Plant" 1907). Mr. Rollin had predicted years before that the famous worker must inevitably perceive the reason for human racial convergence, or type fusion, and had corresponded with him. "I highly prize your book," he wrote. "Will send you mine just as soon as I receive a copy. Of course, no one can doubt that the future race will be composite all the leading races today are such. Am glad to know that you see so deeply into nature and see that the whole Universe is of one piece. It takes a poet scientist and a science poet to know this, and neither of them separately can fully understand it. Race hatred, which is almost universal at first, is found among plants as well as among human beings. In human beings it is almost invariably found in those of very inferior minds (by my observation). As you say, the subject is not only interesting and important but is transcendent and infinite. "

I am, as you suppose, one of the busiest men on earth, but would like you for a neighbor very much; why not move to a better land, you will live twenty years longer for it, I am sure.

An autograph copy of Burbank's work came, inscribed: ' "With admiration and respect." In the first chapter (written before he had heard of the synthetic philosophy of Rollin) fusion is explained paralelly. It should be noted that both authors, who do not wish to see the movement thoughtlessly accelerated, sound a note of warning to the individual. Nature does, not always act according to our conception of kindness, and while favoring the perpetuation and improvement of the race is sometimes relentless to the individual, intelligence is protective. "Increased knowledge" says Mr. Rollin, "means increased circumspection"

As to this homestead, a writer in the Farm and Fireside has said: "Drawn by the love of art, music and literature, many persons visit Rollin Place yearly; and all pilgrims to this Mecca are cordially welcomed. Mr. and Mrs. Rollin possess none of the exclusiveness which mars the character of many talented persons."

They hope for the cessation of wars among Christian nations (so called); and for the regulation of those unjust commercial profits which degrade certain capitalists and pinch the "plain people" of Lincoln.