His son, also named Aaron, became a
Congregational minister. Two of the sons of the younger Aaron
became ministers, one of them an Episcopalian like his
grandfather. Another son, William, who became a prosperous
silversmith, was for many years a deacon in the church in which
his father preached. William sent his second son, Richard, to
Yale, where he graduated with honors at the age of nineteen. He
turned to the Presbyterian church, studied theology at Princeton,
and upon receiving ordination began a ministerial career which
like that of many preachers was carried on in many pastorates. He
was settled at Caldwell, New Jersey, in his third pastorate, and
there Stephen Grover Cleveland was born, on March 18, 1837, the
fifth in a family of children that eventually increased to nine.
He was named after the Presbyterian minister who was his father's
predecessor. The first name soon dropped out of use, and from
childhood he went by his middle name, a practice of which the
Clevelands supply so many instances that it seems to be quite a
family trait.
In campaign literature, so much has been made of the humble
circumstances in which Grover made his start in life that the
unwary reader might easily imagine that the future President was
almost a waif. Nothing could be farther from the truth. He really
belonged to the most authentic aristocracy that any state of
society can produce--that which maintains its standards and
principles from generation to generation by the integrity of the
stock without any endowment of wealth.
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