THE

LIFE AND PUBLIC SERVICES

OF

GROVER CLEVELAND.

CHAPTER I.

The Cleveland Family.-Aaron Cleveland Settles in the Connecticut Valley. Franklin Writes his Obituary.-An Early Antislavery Man.-Stories of Grover Cleveland's Great-Grandfather. Father Cleveland's Work in Boston.-Richard Falley Cleveland Graduates at Yale College and Enters the Ministry. -His Marriage and Settlement at Caldwell, New Jersey.

In the Presbyterian parsonage, a modest, two-story dwelling, in the little village of Caldwell, near Newark, New Jersey, a son was born to the worthy minister on the eighteenth day of March, 1837. This child, the fifth with which the parents had been blessed since their marriage in Baltimore, in 1829, was named Stephen Grover Cleveland, in pleasant memory of the Rev. Stephen Grover, who had formerly occupied the parsonage and preached the undiluted gospel to the villagers of Caldwell.

This boy, entering the world in which he was later to fill so large and distinguished a place by such an obscure gateway in rural New Jersey, came of good stock and of

sturdy ancestry. The line in which he descended was one that might inspire any of its members with an honest pride of birth. Not that it was traceable to titled or landed nobility in the Old World, for there was nothing of the sort; not that it had the prestige of inherited wealth, for the Clevelands, as far back as the family records run, had never manifested a talent for amassing riches. But it was a family in which intellect was the distinguishing characteristic, with strong purpose and honest manhood shown in the life of each of its representatives. In this Republic, where character is the only patent of nobility, it may truly be said that Grover Cleveland's ancestors were entitled to a high place in our democratic peerage.

The stock from which this family came was that of the sturdy settlers in the Connecticut valley. Among those subjects of King George who earliest established themselves along that river, and contested the possession of its rights with their rivals, the Dutch, was Aaron Cleveland. He was a loyal subject and an ardent churchman. Possessed of a liberal education, and of ambition to make use of his talents in that line which seems to have been always most congenial to the Clevelands-the ministry-he returned to England to take orders. At this time, in the early half of the eighteenth century, no bishop of the Church of England was resident in America; and Aaron Cleveland made the long and, at that time, perilous voyage to England for the purpose of confirmation in holy orders. Returning to America he devoted himself to the work of the ministry at East Haddam, on the Connecticut river, where he established his family, and where, on the 9th of February, 1744, a son was born, who was christened Aaron Cleveland, after his father. This son of the Episcopal clergyman, born in the settlement on the banks of the Connecticut, was the greatgrandfather of Grover Cleveland.

Dr. Aaron Cleveland, the father, continued his work in the ministry for fourteen years after the birth of this son, securing recognition in the Church, and the friendship and esteem of the leading public men of that time. He died at the house of Benjamin Franklin, at Philadelphia, to which city he had been called on business connected with the Church, In the Philadelphia Gazette of August 18, 1757, published by Franklin, there appeared the following mention of Dr. Cleveland's death, which shows the estimation in which the character of the man was held:

"On Thursday last, after a lingering illness, died here the Rev. Mr. Cleveland, lately appointed to the mission at Newcastle by the Society for Propagating the Gospel. As he was a gentleman of a humane and pious disposition, indefatigable in his ministry, easy and affable in his conversation, open and sincere in his friendship, and above every species of meanness and dissimulation, his death is greatly lamented by all who knew him as a loss to the public, a loss to the Church of Christ in general, and in particular to that congregation who had proposed to themselves so much satisfaction from his late appointment among them, agreeable to their own request."

On the death of the first Aaron Cleveland, the son bearing the same name returned to the Connecticut colony. He did not, however, settle at his birthplace, but established himself in the town of Norwich, where, in obedience to the family trait of self-reliance, he first turned his hand to setting himself up in a trade which should produce for him a livelihood, and made hats. He was successful as a hatter; but he had inherited from his father a taste for intellectual pursuits, and had, moreover, received as thorough an education as the Episcopal clergyman could secure for his son in that new country, and he soon found opportunity for enlarging his field of endeavor.

While in business in Norwich he was chosen to represent that town in the Legislature, and there he made his mark as an active anti-slavery man. Indeed, his place in the records and traditions of the town is not that of a successful hatter so much as it is that of a versatile speaker, writer, and actor in the politics of that time. He introduced in the Legislature a bill for the abolition of slavery, and was the leader in the movement, if not the first advoIcate of this reform.

He was a man of strong character, who marked out his life for himself according to the dictates of his own conscience; and it is not surprising to find him, although born and brought up in the tenets of the English church, finally separating himself from the ecclesiastical preferences of his father and seeking his lifework in the ministry of the Congregational denomination. This was doubtless in some measure due to his strong feelings in regard to slavery, which in those days was tolerated by the English church, but against which the Congregationalism of the New England colonies determinedly battled. For Aaron Cleveland was a strong partisan, believed what he had to believe with his whole soul, and set his face like a flint against that which he thought to be wrong, or tending to wrong. Such, at least, is the testimony of the sparse records of the life of the greatgrandfather of Grover Cleveland.

Tradition is yet more generous with reminiscences of this

man.

He was a strong Federalist in politics, later on; and, although a clergyman, did not hesitate-as, indeed, is the case of clergymen of these as well as of those earlier days -to take part in politics or to let his views be known whenever there was occasion. His son George shared his independence of thought, and when ready to set out for himself in the world, emigrated to Vermont and took orders as an Episcopal clergyman, also allying himself with the

Jeffersonian party in the political contest which then was strong and bitter. Father and son were on perfectly good terms, and visits were exchanged. On his return from one of these, a neighbor asked of the father:

"Well, Mr. Cleveland, how did you find George?"

"Poorly enough! He has joined the Episcopals and become a Democrat."

Aaron Cleveland had in full measure that sharp humor which goes with strong, aggressive character; and several of the anecdotes which have been attributed to other divines of later years really have him for their hero. There is that notable one of the encounter of the parson and the Jeffersonian propagandist on the highway, the former mounted on his horse, the latter trudging by the way:

"Good-morning, priest," remarks the man.

son.

"Good-morning, Democrat," retorts the ready witted par"But how do you know that I am a priest?" "By your dress. But how did you know I was a Democrat?"

"By your address."

It is also this Aaron Cleveland of whom one of the chroniclers of the ecclesiastical jokes current about New Haven, tells the story that, after having visited the graveyard in which the notables of the place were buried, and having carefully studied the fulsome epitaphs, he scribbled on the gate of the sacred inclosure the couplet which has since become famous:

"Here lie the dead,

And here the living lie."

Rev. Aaron Cleveland died in New Haven in 1815, full of years, respected and beloved. One of his sons, Charles, who was born in 1772, became noted in the ministry. He established himself in Boston, where his work as City Missionary will be long remembered. He lived to a very ad