Albert G. Knight was born in Brattleboro, Vt., in May, 1808; he received the advantages of the Schools of the place, but they were not very extensive; he, however, acquired a taste for solid reading, and literally devoured the few books which were within his reach; soon after reaching his teens, he went to Providence, R.I., and served some years in a large crockery store; he then went to Baltimore and engaged in the same business; from there, he crossed the mountains, and settled in the young town of Cincinnati, where he married Miss Delia Gazlay, soon after which event he removed to Wayne Co., N.Y., and engaged in farming, where he was joined by his parents, his two brothers and only sister; the fever and ague was a little too much for them there, and early in the year 1836, Albert G. started for the West, a solitary horseman, arriving at Chicago the last of March, where he sold his horse and pushed forward to Racine on foot, because at that early season of the year there was no grass, neither hay nor grain on which the animal could be fed, had yet been raised. His sister Mary followed him in May, coming by schooner from Oswego, and the rest of the family, which had been increased by the birth of a daughter, followed, arriving in Racine August 29, 1836, by the same mode of conveyance. As elsewhere stated, there were but few settlers in the clearing known as Racine upon his arrival, and other pages of this work show so much of his relation to public affairs that it is unnecessary to repeat. In 1851, he engaged in the business of making abstracts of title, conveyances, and the like, for which he was eminently fitted. In 1854, he associated with him the late Eliphalet Cram, between whom and himself sprang up the warmest friendship based upon mutual regard. Mr. Cram died in 1868, and the firm of Knight -- Cram was changed to that of Knight -- Whiteley, Mr. Knight’s son-in-law, Simeon Whiteley, having purchased the interest of Mr. Cram in the valuable books of record and other property of the old firm. The business is still carried on by them. It is worthy of note that Mr. Knight’s grandfather, Samuel Knight, was appointed one of the Judges of the Colony of Vermont, by the English crown, his commission as such being one of the heir-looms in the family. During the early part of the Revolutionary war, Judge Knight retained his office under authority of the State of New York, which, history informs us, claimed jurisdiction over Vermont until the State was admitted to the Federation, at which time Judge Knight was made the first Chief Justice of the State, and he remained upon the bench until the time of his death. Mr. Knight’s wife and the mother of his children, died in the year 1858. She was a woman of superior mind and culture, and the deepest piety. The Gazlay family, of which she was a member, were among the first settlers of Cincinnati, her oldest brother, James W., who but recently died at a very advanced age, being one of the representatives in Congress from the Cincinnati District. Another brother, Sayrs, was a prominent clergyman of the straightest sect of the Presbyterian faith, and figured in the celebrated trial of Lyman Beecher, for heresy. Mrs. Knight’s sister, Karenda, is the mother of Rev. Prof. Swing, of Chicago, whose recent trial for the same crime as that of Lyman Beecher is still fresh in memory. Mrs. Knight was the mother of six children--Sayrs G. (now City Surveyor); Jane G. (Mrs. Simeon Whiteley); Mary H. (Mrs. Capt. Chas. E. Jewett--now living in California); John Wesley (now in the West Indies); James Mason (who died in 1874); and Miss Delia (now Third Assistant Principal in the Racine High School). In 1868, Mr. Knight married Miss Anna Hanson, a native of the island of Laaland, in the Baltic Sea, a dependency of the Kingdom of Denmark, who now presides over his present home at the corner of College avenue and Fifteenth street, a charming spot, where good taste adorns and a boundless hospitality is dispensed, as especially the Presiding Elders and Preachers of the Methodist denomination of the Northwest will attest.⁷