- CORNISH

HIS ANCESTRY-HIS

MARRIAGES AND CHILDREN-SOME ACCOUNT OF THE CHASE
FAMILY CHILDHOOD.

ALMON PORTLAND CHASE was born in Cornish,

score years before his birth, his grandfather and his father, with their families, had dwelt in Cornish; and their homestead, a substantial country-house of the eighteenth century, still stands, as firm and sound as when-now more than a hundred years ago-his ancestors built and lived in it. Fertile meadows surround it; a half-mile in its rear rise up the stately hills of Cornish; at its front rolls the beautiful Connecticut; in the west, on the Vermont side of the river, towering grandly among the neighboring summits, the kingly Ascutney lifts his head more than three thousand feet above the sea, and at sunset covers

with his shadow the old homestead of Dudley and Ithamar Chase.

Family names and family history are of no political, and perhaps even of small social importance, in a republic, where, it is said, "worth makes the man." But it is nevertheless a fine impulse of our nature that prompts us to pride in an honorable ancestry. That of Mr. Chase was neither royal nor noble, but through many generations it has been marked for the highest qualities that can distinguish men-temperance, probity, religious life and intellectual strength.

He was ninth in descent from Thomas Chase of Chesham, England, and sixth from Aquila Chase, born in England, shipmaster, who settled in the town of Newbury, Massachusetts, about 1640. The fifth son of this Aquila-who was second of his name,' and in the fourth generation from Thomas Chase of Chesham-was Moses, born 1663. Moses Chase married Anne Follansbee, and became the father of ten children, the two elder of whom were Moses and Daniel, twins, born September, 1685. Daniel married Sarah March, in 1706, and became the father of ten children also, Samuel being the first. Samuel married Mary Dudley of Sutton, and removed to Cornish. He had nine children, the third of whom, Dudley, was born in 1730, and in 1753 was married to Alice Corbett of Mendon. Dudley and Alice Chase had fourteen children, and eight of them were sons who attained to the years of manhood: Simeon, Salmon, Ithamar, Baruch, Corbett, Heber, Dudley, and Philander, and all of these arrived at more or less distinction in their several walks of life.

1 Shortly after Mr. Chase was elected Governor of Ohio, a gentleman claiming to be his relative wrote him, touching the supposed great "Chase estate" in England, awaiting heirs, and solicited assistance in order to establish the claims of the American branch of the family. The Governor replied that he had no objection to admit the relationship asserted by his correspondent, though their common ancestor was no nearer than Adam, provided his correspondent was an honest man, and voted the Free-soil ticket! He added that the best way to make a living is by labor, and that he had no faith in the supposed English estate, and no wish to participate in the effort to get it, even if it existed, since great injury must result to innocent persons if the effort were successful.

It may be worth while saying here, for the benefit of the curious, that there seems to be no basis to the stories current, of a great estate in England awaiting the heirs of Aquila Chase. They are probably fictitious; at any rate rest upon flimsy foundations.

Ithamar Chase was born in 1763, and in 1789 married Jannette Ralston of Keene, daughter of Alexander Ralston and Janette his wife, both natives of Falkirk, Scotland. Ithamar and Jannette Chase were the parents of eleven children, and of these Salmon Portland Chase was the eighth.

Salmon Portland Chase' was thrice married: First, March 4, 1834, to Katharine Jane Garniss, who was born in New York City, August 21, 1811; died December 1, 1835. They had one child, Katharine, born November 16, 1835; died February 6, 1840. Second, September 26, 1839, to Eliza Ann Smith, born at Cincinnati, November 12, 1821; died September 29, 1845. They had issue three children-Katharine, born August 13, 1840; Lizzie, born May 30, 1842; died August 30, 1842; Lizzie, born June 1, 1843; died July 24, 1844. Third, November 6, 1846, to Sarah Bella Dunlop Ludlow, born near Cincinnati, April 20, 1820. They had issue two children: Janet Ralston, born September 19, 1847; Josephine Ludlow, born July 3, 1849; died July 28, 1850. Sarah Bella D. L. Chase died at Clifton near Cincinnati, January 13, 1852.

Two only of the six children born to Mr. Chase lived to mature years: Katharine, daughter of his second wife, married November 12, 1863, to William Sprague of Rhode Island, now a Senator in Congress from that State; and Janet Ralston, married March 23, 1871, to William Sprague Hoyt, of New York City.

Although Mr. Chase was the husband of three wives, his married life was somewhat less than thirteen years. He outlived all his brothers and sisters, and of the former none left male issue.

His uncles, Salmon, Baruch, and Dudley Chase, were graduates of Dartmouth College, and all became lawyers. Dudley was five times elected Speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives; was United States Senator from 1813 to 1817, resigning in the latter year. He was then elected Chief-Justice of the State, and reëlected three successive years; and was again United States Senator from 1825 to 1831. He died at Ran

'The middle name of the Chief-Justice was given him by his parents, to commemorate the death of his uncle Salmon at Portland. Mr. Chase was wont to say, that he was his uncle's monument.

dolph, full of years and honors. Heber and Corbett Chase became physicians; Simeon and Ithamar were farmers, although the latter for many years represented his district in the Council of New Hampshire, and was also a justice of the peace, and a good deal talked of for Governor of the State, though he never became a candidate. Philander Chase, the youngest of this family, was graduated at Dartmouth, and was subsequently Episcopal Bishop of Ohio, and afterward of Illinois. "While a student at Dartmouth," says Mr. Chase, in "The Trowbridge Letters," "poring over some books which were in the college library, Philander Chase became convinced (he had been reared a Congregationalist) that the Episcopal Church was that which the apostles had founded, and, prompt to act upon his convictions, had joined its communion. His zeal or his logic, or both, so wrought upon my grandfather's family that, so far as I know without exception, they all became Episcopalians. This must have happened about the beginning of the century; for an Episcopal Church was built and consecrated, and the family were devout worshipers there, when I was born. The bishop was an earnest, able, faithful, valiant man; imperious it may be ; confident in himself, but more confident in God-always saying, 'Jehovah Jireh, God will help,' and always finding himself helped. My father never went to college, but had the commonschool education of other farmer-boys. As he grew in years, he married my mother, then a handsome young woman, the daughter of Scottish parents-Ralston père, Balloch mère—and herself just escaped from birth in Scotland, for her parents came over the very year she saw the light."

Mr. Chase has written that his earliest recollections of him-. self were of a dangerous attack of a malignant fever; and next, of the school and school-house, and his teacher, Daniel Breck of Vermont, afterward a distinguished citizen of Kentucky, and a member of the highest judicial tribunal of that State. Mr. Chase when a mere child, not always able to make his way through the heavy New-England snows to the little schoolhouse, not more than a hundred rods distant from his father's gate, and often borne thither upon the shoulders of older boys, and sometimes by the teacher himself, was remarkable for his application to his childish studies, and for his success and accuracy

RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD.

5

in mastering them. It was not a very serious task, of course, to get to the head of the spelling-classes, having but one competitor at all formidable; a little girl Bessy Marble by name, the pretty daughter of a near neighbor and intimate friend of his father's. Bessy was his rival in the school, and his companion out of it; she grew up an accomplished and superior woman, whose after-history was not without some coloring of romance. The boy was a resolute, hard-headed, ambitious little fellow, said Mr. Breck, with whom so soon as he could read, reading became a passion. To get away into some unnoticed corner of the house, or under a clump of trees, with a book, and Bessy at his side, reading aloud to her, was his chief happiness and occupa"Rollin's Ancient History"-dear, delightful book—was

tion.

his earliest treasure.

"I was religiously educated," writes Mr. Chase, "but not under any very severe restraint. I was baptized into the Episcopal Church, and among my earliest recollections are those of a square pew in the south side of the little church, near the east wall, where, however, I think I did more sleeping than any thing else."

Five generations of his ancestors, and more than fifty members of the Chase family, sleep in the little Cornish churchyard.

The inscriptions upon the tombstones of some of them are in the quaint but simple and beautiful language of New-England people threescore years ago; while the sculptured angelforms which almost invariably appear at the tops of the stones, as introductory somewhat to the inscriptions which follow, though highly regarded then, rather startle the finer artistic tastes of the present generation.

"I was a rustic boy," writes Mr. Chase, "very rustic; full of faith; not much given to ask for the causes of things; ready to accept what was told me, but equally ready to correct errors of information by better information or experience; ambitious to be at the head of my class and without much other ambition, and not grudging that place even to any one who fairly earned it, and least of all, to pretty Bessy Marble.

"And so, with a kind father and mother watching over me; with old Ascutney looking down upon me every morning from