146 



CLEVELAND, GROVER. 



Essex County, N. J., March 18, 1837. On the 

 paternal side he is of English origin. Moses 

 Cleveland emigrated from Ipswich, county of 

 Suffolk, England, in 1635, and settled at 

 Woburn, Mass., where he died in 1701. His 

 grandson, Aaron, went to East Haddam, 

 Conn., in 1738, made money in land specu- 

 lations, was designated in the town records 

 as " a gentleman," and left an estate of 

 3,000. One of his sons, Moses, was grand- 

 father of Major-Gen. Erastus Cleveland, of 

 Madison, N. Y., who commanded the United 

 States forces at Sackett's Harbor in the War 

 of 1812. Another son, Aaron, great-great- 

 grandfather of Grover, was graduated at 

 Harvard College in 1735, and after a Presby- 

 terian pastorate at Haddam, Conn., and sub- 

 sequently at Maiden, Mass., received orders in 

 the Church of England, was ordained priest 

 by the Bishop of London, and was commis- 

 sioned by the Society for Propagating the Gos- 

 pel in Foreign Parts to take charge of a church 

 at Carlisle, Pa. On his way to his mission 

 he was taken ill in Philadelphia and died in 

 the house of his intimate friend, Dr. Benja- 

 min Franklin, who wrote his obituary, print- 

 ed in the "'Pennsylvania Gazette," Aug. 18, 

 1751, of which Franklin at that time was editor. 

 Aaron's son Aaron, Grover's great-grandfather, 

 was a merchant in Norwich, Conn., was con- 

 spicuous for his opposition to slavery, and 

 while a representative from Norwich intro- 

 duced a bill in the Connecticut Legislature for 

 its abolition. One of his sons, Charles, was 

 the widely -known "Father Cleveland," for 

 many years city missionary of Boston, and one 

 of the daughters married Dr. Samuel Hanson 

 Cox, father of Bishop Arthur Cleveland Coxe, 

 of Western New York, resident at Buffalo. 

 Another son of Aaron, William, was a silver- 

 smith and watchmaker at Norwich, Conn. 

 His son, Richard Falley Cleveland, was gradu- 

 ated at Yale College in 1824, was ordained to 

 the Presbyterian ministry in 1829, and in the 

 same year married Anne Neal, the daughter of 

 a Baltimore merchant of Irish birth. These 

 two were the parents of Grover Cleveland. 



The Presbyterian parsonage at Caldwell, 

 where the future President was born, was first 

 occupied by the Rev. Stephen Grover, in whose 

 honor the subject of this biography was named; 

 but the first name was early dropped, and he 

 has been known from his boyhood as Grover 

 Cleveland. When he was four years old, his 

 father accepted a call to Fayetteville, near 

 Syracuse, N. Y., where Grover had an academy 

 schooling, and afterward was a clerk in a coun- 

 try store. The removal of the family to Clin- 

 ton, Oneida County, gave Grover additional 

 educational advantages in the academy there. 

 In his seventeenth year he became a clerk and 

 an assistant teacher in the New York Institu- 

 tion for the Blind, in New York city, in which 

 his elder brother, William, an alumnus of Ham- 

 ilton College, now a Presbyterian clergyman 

 at Forrestport, N. Y., was then a teacher. In 



1855 Grover started from Holland Patent, in 

 Oneida County, where his mother then resided, 

 to go West in search of employment. On his 

 way he stopped at Black Rock, now a part of 

 Buffalo, and called on his uncle, Lewis F. Allen, 

 who induced him to remain and assist him in 

 the compilation of a volume of the "American 

 Herd-Book," receiving for six weeks' service 

 $60. He afterward assisted in the preparation 

 of several other volumes of this work, and the 

 preface to the fifth volume (1861) acknowledges 

 his services. 



In August, 1855, he secured a place as clerk 

 and copyist for the law firm of Rogers, Bowen, 

 & Rogers, in Buffalo, began to read Blackstone, 

 and in the autumn of that year was receiving 

 four dollars a week for his work. He was ad- 

 mitted to the bar in 1859, but for three years 

 longer he remained with the firm that first em- 

 ployed him, acting as managing clerk at a sal- 

 ary of $600, soon advanced to $1,000, a part 

 of which he devoted to the support of his 

 widowed mother, who died in 1882. He was 

 appointed Assistant District Attorney of Erie 

 County, Jan. 1, 1863, and held the office for 

 three years. At this time strenuous efforts 

 were making to bring the civil war to a close. 

 Two of Cleveland's brothers were in the army, 

 and his mother and sisters were dependent 

 largely upon him for support. Unable to en- 

 list, he borrowed money to send a substitute, 

 and it was not till long after the war that 

 he was able to repay the loan. In 1865, at 

 the age of twenty-eight, he was the Demo- 

 cratic candidate for District Attorney, but was 

 beaten by the Republican candidate, his inti- 

 mate friend, Lyman K. Bass. He then became 

 a^law partner of ex-State Treasurer Isaac V. 

 Vanderpool, and continued a successful prac- 

 tice till 1870, when he was elected Sheriff of 

 Erie County. At the expiration of his three- 

 years' term he formed a law partnership with 

 his personal friend and political antagonist, Ly- 

 man K. Bass, the firm being Bass, Cleveland, 

 & Bissell, and, after the forced retirement from 

 ill-health of Mr. Bass, Cleveland & Bissell. 

 The firm was prosperous, and Cleveland at- 

 tained high rank as a lawyer, noted for the 

 simplicity and directness of his logic and ex- 

 pression, and his thorough mastery of his 

 cases, rather than for brilliant rhetorical or 

 oratorical display. 



In the autumn of 1881 he was nominated 

 Democratic candidate for Mayor of Buffalo, and 

 was elected by a majority of 3,530, the largest 

 ever given to a candidate in that city. In the 

 same election the Republican State ticket was 

 carried in Buffalo by an average majority of 

 over 1,600. But Cleveland had a partial Re- 

 publican, Independent, and "reform" move- 

 ment support. He entered upon the office, 

 Jan. 1, 1882, and the following extract from his 

 inaugural address was the key-note of his ad- 

 ministration : 



It seems to me that a successful and faithful ad- 

 ministration of the government of our city may bo 



