yet we all have an innate conviction that there is something pleasant in knowing that we come of good stock; and indeed it would be strange if we valued that recommendation little for ourselves, as human beings, which we prize so much in the animals that serve us. And so, although it has been left for others to make the discovery, the fact is not without interest that the American branch of the family to which the president belongs, runs back to 1635, when Moses Cleaveland came to Massachusetts from Ipswich, in Suffolk County, England. The spelling Cleaveland is still retained by some of the collateral branches of the family on this side the water, but the form Cleveland was in common use in England, and it was so that John Cleveland, the Royalist poet, wrote the name. It may be said, in passing, that it would not be without interest to discover, if possible, if there were any connection between the family of John Cleveland and that of Grover Cleveland's English ancestors, for the resemblance between the characters of the two men is striking, and as honorable as it is striking. As we read John Cleveland's appeals to Cromwell for freedom and immunity after the death of the king, to whose cause the poet had so devotedly adhered until that cause was hopelessly lost, we seem to hear the prophecy of that boldness, that honesty fearless of consequences, that refusal to withdraw or apologize for sentiments honestly held and openly maintained, which are so characteristic of one who may easily be an offshoot of that vigorous stem.
The President's grandfather, William Cleveland, was a watchmaker doing business at Westfield, Mass., but on his marriage with Margaret Falley, of Norwich, Conn., he went there to live, and it was there that his son, Richard Falley Cleveland, was born. According to the old system, it was decided by his family to make a clergyman of Richard Cleveland, and accordingly after making his terms at Yale College, and studying divinity at Princeton, he entered the ministry; and having made some preliminary trials, was finally settled in charge of the Presbyterian Church in the village of Caldwell, Essex County, N. J., and in this place his son, Stephen Grover Cleveland, was born, March 18, 1837. The name of Stephen Grover was given out of respect to the memory of a clergyman, Stephen Grover, who preceded his father in the charge of his new parish. When the boy was only four years of age, Richard Cleveland accepted a call to what was then almost the frontier-settlement of Fayetteville, Onondaga County, N. Y. Here the Cleveland family remained for eleven years making the most of life, and winning from the meagre salary of $600 earned by the father, a harvest of cheerful content, of homely comfort, and of unselfish mutual affection that might well be envied by many whose means are far greater. The children were blessed in their parents, and the parents were rewarded by the love and devotion of their children. Later in life, on the day of his election to the governorship of New York, in a letter to his elder brother, the Rev. William N. Cleveland, Grover Cleveland showed where his heart was, for his first words express a quiet regret that his mother's recent death had made it impossible to make her the recipient of his deepest feelings, of his hopes and fears on this important event in his life; and at the close of the letter he again recurs to the theme as if the memory of his mother were a part and parcel of his life.
In 1851, Richard Cleveland, with his wife and nine children, left Fayetteville, for Clinton, Oneida County, N. Y., where he was to act as the agent for the American Home Missionary Society, with a salary of $1,000 a year. But of more importance than this modest increase of pay, was the opportunity the new place offered for giving his children a better education than they had been able to get at Fayetteville. Grover did not leave Fayetteville with the rest of the family, because he had engaged himself for a year with the keeper of a grocery store in the village, where he was to receive the sum of $50 for the first year and $100 for the second. At the end of the first year, however, his father, ambitious for his boy's education, sent for him and placed him at the Academy in Clinton, where he was to be fitted to enter Hamilton College in due time. But this larger opportunity he was not to enjoy. His father received a call to take charge of a church at Holland Patent, a village near Utica, N. Y., and the whole family left their home in Clinton for this place; but only three weeks after their arrival the father died, October 1, 1853, and the wife, with so many of the children as still remained at home, were left to support life as their scanty means enabled them. The mother, evidently a woman of much force of character, remained on the rock where the waves of changing fortune last flung her, and by her own efforts and the willing hands of her children, kept the family together until, her loving duty done by all that remained to her, she died in 1882, living happily long enough to see the beginning of her high hope for her son Grover, fulfilled in his honorable career as Mayor of Buffalo.
Grover Cleveland was now to exchange for a short time the quiet life of a country village for the more stirring experience of life in a great city. His brother William, after leaving Hamilton College, had obtained employment as an instructor in the Institution for the Blind in New York City, where he was the principal of the male teachers. After the death of his father, he secured for his brother Grover the place of book-keeper and assistant to the superintendent of the asylum. The boy came to his new place, not only with the good character given him by his brother, then as now a man much respected by his associates, but with the good word of all with whom he had been connected, whether as school-boy or as work-boy.
Grover Cleveland left New York in the autumn of 1854, at the end of his year's engagement at the Institution for the Blind. He returned to his mother's home for a brief visit, and then, with the hope of making a beginning in the profession of the law, which he for some time intended to take up, he visited some of the towns where his family was known, Syracuse and Utica, in the hope of finding employment; but as no opening presented itself, he determined to visit Cleveland, a town named for one of his family. He stopped on his way at Buffalo, to visit an uncle, Lewis F. Allen, a well-known farmer, who published each year a compilation made by himself: "The American Short-Horn Herd-Book." Pleased with his young relative, Mr. Allen persuaded him to remain in Buffalo and assist him in his work; and thus it happened that Grover Cleveland found himself planted in a city with which in time his fortunes and his fame were to become closely associated; while, on the other hand, the results of that connection to the city itself were to be far-reaching and of great importance.
By the recommendation of his uncle he obtained a place as office-boy in the office of Bowen & Rogers, one of the principal firms of lawyers in Western New York. It was thus that he began his legal studies, reading hard in all his odd moments; and in his spare time after office-hours assisting his uncle, with whom at first he lived, in the compilation of the "Herd-Book." Mr. Parker tells us that the first appearance in print of Grover Cleveland's name is in the "Herd-Book" for 1861, in which Mr. Allen expresses his acknowledgment of "the kindness, industry, and ability of his young friend and kinsman, in correcting and arranging the pedigrees for publication." Prompt to seize every opportunity for increasing his knowledge of the world about him, and feeling, perhaps, that his uncle's farm in the outskirts of Buffalo was too much like the village he had left, he took rooms with an old schoolmate from Fayetteville in the old Southern Hotel in Buffalo, at that time a resort for drovers and farmers, where his knowledge of their business, obtained in his uncle's employ, brought him into closer acquaintance with at least one division of the "plain people" than could have been gained without that experience.
The ceremony at Grover Cleveland's marriage.
Grover Cleveland was admitted to the bar in 1859. He did not at first begin the practice of the law on his own account, but remained for four years longer with his teachers, until he had gained the position of chief clerk. In 1858, on coming of age, he cast his first vote, giving it to the Democratic party; but not content with the mere performance of this part of the citizen's duty, "he took his place at the polls and throughout the day distributed ballots by the side of the veterans of his party." "This habit," says Mr. Parker, "he kept up until his election as governor. He was never a partisan, but he believed in working for his party, and he not only worked for it at the polls, but he always marched in the procession whenever a great Democratic demonstration was made."