On the morning of the 17th of October a few friends came in at the breakfast hour, and our daughter passed into the keeping of another.  Though fully satisfied with the arrangement, the occasion imposed upon me the most difficult duty of my life.  The ceremony was performed in connection with the family devotions, and quite unmanned me.  Assembled in the parlor, I took my usual place to lead the devotions.  The Scriptures were read, and my daughter presided as usual at the piano.  Thus far everything maintained its accustomed order.  But when we knelt in prayer, and I closed my eyes to all visible things, the invisible came trooping in throngs to my already burdened thought.  Then came the vivid recollection of the many happy years we had spent together as a family, the many sweet hours we had spent together in that parlor, with music and song, in which our dear daughter had ever been the central figure, and the now sad fact of an immediate separation.  The chain must now be broken, and its then brightest link snatched away to gladden another home, while our own circle must be broken forever.

With these thoughts rushing upon me, it is not a matter of surprise that I was quite overwhelmed with feeling, and found utterance almost impossible.  How I passed through the prayer and the ceremony that followed, has never been quite clear to me, but I was told that nothing was omitted that could be deemed essential to the occasion.  The wedding party was soon after dismissed with our blessing, and we at once began the preparations for our own trip to the cars, to occur in the afternoon of the same day.

We reached Fond du Lac at nightfall, and were kindly entertained by Rev. J.T.  Woodhead and his family.  The following day we were invited to the pleasant home of our old friend, C.O.  Hurd, who, with his most excellent family, gave us a kindly greeting and cared for us until the arrival of our goods.

My predecessor on the District was Rev. Theron O. Hollister, a man “full of faith and the Holy Ghost.”  Brother Hollister was received into the Conference at its session in Baraboo in 1853, and his first charge was Summit.  His subsequent fields of labor were Fort Atkinson, Lake Mills, Greenbush, Sheboygan Falls, and Fond du Lac, where he succeeded to the District.  At the close of his term on the District he was appointed to Oconomowoc, next to Waukesha, and the year following to Hart Prairie.  Here his health utterly broke down, and at the following session of the Conference in 1868, he was compelled to take a superannuated relation.  He now removed to Salem, in Kenosha County, where he died March 13, 1869, aged forty-seven.

Brother Hollister was a man of robust frame, and, generally, good health.  He was an earnest man, and whatever he did was done with all his strength, of both mind and body.  With limited early opportunities, and too intensely occupied in after years with the practical labor of the Ministry, to retrieve the loss he had sustained, he did not aspire to a knowledge of books.  But in all the active labor of leading souls to Christ, he was a workman who needed not to be ashamed.