Millard Fillmore, by Paul Raymond Audibert, Paris.

Additional information on Audibert pending.

Millard Fillmore, Thirteenth President of the United States, Born Summer Hill, Cayuga County, N.Y., February 7, 1800, died Buffalo, March 8, 1874. The following is excerpted from the coverleaf of the engraving:

"The boy Fillmore grew up amont the trees and in the clearings of the beautiful lake region of New York. Whith abounding health and a vigorous constitution, that made the possessor a stranger to disease and weakness all his days, he inherited a fine manly figure that rendered him notable in later life."***

"To him the advantage of education were few, for in the log schoolhouses on the frontier, in that era, few men could be spared from manual labor. The young people were usually taught by women having but little intellectual training or resources of learning. Millard Fillmore never saw a geography or atlas until he was nineteen, and rarely a book of any sort beyond the Bible, almanac, and John Bunyan's immortal story. With this scanty library in the log-cabin home we was well acquainted."***

"He was admitted to the bar (Buffalo) in 1823, but from modesty and other considerations opened an office at East Aurora, N.Y., teaching school as well as practicing law. From that timne forward Millard Fillmore was an exceedingly busy man, alternating his work of private legal practice with activity in political and public executive life."***

"The supreme ambition of our thirteenth President was to make his country great. He impressed upon the world the purpose of the American nation, in all its foreign relations, to do righteousness and to be generous toward the weak. Of explorations, the enlargement of commerce, cultivation of friendship with old and new nations, he was an ardent advocate. While personally active in schemes of humanity, he was vigorous in suppressing unlawful enterprises. In China and the North Pacific, in South America, in the Holy Land, Americans were notable forward in opening new paths of knowledge or avenues of commerce, but it was especially in the "discovery of a new nation," the Japanese, that Millard Fillmore was most wisely active. Many writers have claimed for themselves or their heroes the honor of "originating" the successful Perry expedition of 1854, but to none so much as to President Fillmore are the honors of consummation due."

"Millard Fillmore retired to private life, to become the first citizen of Buffalo, to be the founder of institutions and the promoter of noble schemes of civic advancement.*** As the dispenser of a gracious hospitality in his charming home, he was known over the land.*** During the war, without approving of all the details of government policy, he was a loyal upholder of the Union cause."--WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS (1843-1928), from an Address before the Buffalo Historical Society, December 15, 1905. Effective published copyright, ©Mickey Cox 2002, All Rights Reserved.