add to the quality of our racial stock that we can in any sense call our own, or to which the words, "Well done, good and faithful servant," can be rightfully applied. Such I believe to have been substantially the views of the eminent statesman whose career I have undertaken to describe.

Among the papers which Mr. Tilden left behind him, and to which he consecrated a considerable portion of his leisure during the last six or eight months of his life, was a somewhat elaborate genealogical history of the Tilden family. The reasons he assigns for preparing it are such as will justify me in dwelling briefly upon its contents.

"This paper," he wrote, "is the fruit, partly, of a collection formed by throwing into a drawer during many years, almost without plan or definite purpose, memoranda of particular facts which came casually to the collector; and partly by special investigations caused by him at intervals.

"These materials have now been examined and collected during the leisure moments of a few weeks, under a sense that this work could only be done with the aid of a memory supplying the connections between the scattered materials, and that the information might be of interest, perhaps of utility, to the younger members of the family.

"A knowledge of one's descent from a line of virtuous, honorable, and reputable ancestors who performed worthily their part in their day and generation, and who enjoyed the esteem of their contemporaries, is an incentive to imitate their example.

"That a heredity in mental and moral as well as in physical capacities and qualities exists, at least as a tendency, has been recognized in all ages, although the laws by which it is governed have never been ascertained.

"How blest is he who his progenitors

With pride remembers, to the listener tells
The story of their greatness, of their deeds,
And, silently rejoicing, sees himself
The last link of this illustrious chain!""

From this monograph we learn much that is interesting of the race from which the subject of this memoir obviously derived many of the qualities which made him a conspicuous figure in our history, and upon which it was his privilege to confer new distinction.

On the large map of the county of Kent in England, made from the ordnance survey, the name of Tilden appears in four places, and on the sheets defining the parishes, five several times.

Mr. Joseph Samuel Chester, in a letter written to Mr. Tilden, Oct. 9, 1873, from London, says:

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The name is peculiar to the county of Kent, and is undoubtedly from those smaller subdivisions of territory that appear to exist only in what is known as the weald of Kent, called dens. The Saxon word den is equivalent to the modern word dale or dell. The entire weald of Kent is one vast dale or dell, and in one portion of it in particular there are numerous smaller dales, which from time immemorial have borne names ending in den; which names were also given to the towns and villages in the neighborhood. Thus, Tenterden, Biddenden, Benenden, Rolvenden, Marden, Smarden, etc., are all towns or villages lying together within a circuit of very small diameter, and the termination den seldom, if ever, occurs in the names of towns in any other part of the county of Kent. One of these dales or dens bore the name of Tilden from an early period. One Simon Tilden, of Benenden, by his will, dated Oct. 10, 1463, bequeathed his land called Regefeld next the upper den of Tilden;' and John Tilden, of Marden, by his will, dated April 1, 1492, bequeathed sundry lands in Marden on the den of Tilden.' This subdivision known by the name of Tilden had therefore existed long before the period of the adoption of surnames, and it is but fair to presume that the immediate occupants of all the den of Tilden, before known only by their Christian names, as John or Thomas of Tilden, at the

proper time adopted their territorial designation as a patronymic.

"It still practically exists, and will be found on the latest ordnance map of England, and it is understood that here the families bearing the name of Tilden had their origin."

The author of the "Encyclopædia Heraldica" states in the volume relating to Kent, published in 1830, that "William Tylden paid aid for lands in Kent at the Knighting of the Black Prince, 20th Edward III., which was in 1346." He also stated that "from this William Tylden was descended William Tylden of Wormshill, who died 23a of December, 1613, and from him gave the succession down to the Milsted family in 1829." The Tyldens, he adds, "are a very ancient family in this county, one of the family went to America with the Pilgrims, and has founded a numerous family of the name in that country, but they spell their name with an i instead of a y."

The records of Kent show that estates in Kent have borne the name of Tilden for more than six hundred years. The present Sir John Maxwell Tylden, of Millsted in Kent, has in his possession a copy of an ancient pedigree which began with Sir Richard Tylden, who lived under the reigns of Henry II. and Richard I., a period which extended from 1154 to 1189, and his armorial bearings are said to show that his ancestors intermarried with the first Norman Earl of Chester, a nephew of William the Conqueror.

"This paper," says Mr. Tilden, "may pass for what it is worth. For my part, I am not ambitious to trace my ancestry to the ruffian and robber chivalry of Normandy. It is more consonant with my principles and my tastes to prefer to deduce my lineage from the yeomanry of Saxon Kent, who preserved their free customs and their liberal landed tenures, rejecting primogeniture and maintaining equality of inheritance among all children, and caused their institutions to be respected by the victorious Normans after

their occupation of England. It is a line or ancestors who, during centuries of conflict, have, in every instance, been on the side of the largest liberty, and have borne their full share in the struggles, the perils, and the sacrifices through which free institutions have been established."

The Tildens of America can trace their lineage back by authentic records to John Tilden, an influential clothier of Benenden, who was born about the year 1400. He was the direct progenitor of Nathaniel Tilden, who with his family, consisting of his wife Lydia, seven children, and seven servants, in the month of March, 1634, embarked in the good ship "Hercules," of Sandwich, of the burthen of two hundred tons, John Witherby, master, and were therein transported to the plantation called New England, in America; "with the certificate from the Ministers where they last dwelt, of their conversion and conformity to the orders and discipline of the church, and that they had taken the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy."

Nathaniel Tilden is the first name on the passenger list of the "Hercules." He was a man of substance and importance; had been mayor of Tenterden in 1622, and was succeeded in that office by his cousin John in 1623-4. His uncle John had also been mayor of Tenterden in 1585 and in 1600. His father Thomas had been one of the jurats or local magistrates of Tenterden, and his brother Hopestill had held the same office in Sandwich.

Within a year after his arrival at Scituate, in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, where he established himself, Nathaniel Tilden was chosen the ruling elder of the first church of that town; the first conveyance of land recorded in Scituate was made to him in 1628, and it was bounded by land which already belonged to him.

Nathaniel's brother Joseph, two years his junior, was one of the merchant adventurers of London, who fitted out the Mayflower," and furnished the capital with which her passengers founded and maintained their infant settlement.

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Before leaving England, Nathaniel Tilden married Lydia, a daughter of Thomas Bourne. Martha Bourne, one of her sisters, married John Bradford, the eldest son of Governor Bradford. Margaret, another sister, married Josiah Winslow, a brother of Governor Edward Winslow.

Judith, one of Nathaniel Tilden's daughters, married Abraham Preble, from whom was descended Commodore Preble, one of the illustrations of our naval history. Lydia, a granddaughter of Nathaniel Tilden, married William Ticknor, Jr., and was the great-great-grandmother of George Ticknor, the author of the "History of Spanish Literature."

Nathaniel Tilden's youngest son, Stephen, married Hannah Little, of Plymouth, whose father married the daughter of Richard Warren, who came out in the "Mayflower" in 1620, and left two sons, one of whom, Joseph, was the great-great-grandfather of Major-General Warren, who was killed at Bunker Hill.

This Stephen Tilden had twelve children, and became a large proprietor of land in Lebanon, Conn., where he resided. His son Isaac married the daughter of Richard Man, who came out as a member of Elder Brewster's family, also in the "Mayflower."

John Tilden, one of the six children of Isaac and Rebecca Tilden, married Bathseba Janes, by whom he had seven children, the youngest of whom was destined to become the father of the subject of this biography. In the later years of his life, and after the birth of all his children, he moved from Connecticut to the part of the town of Canaan, in Columbia county, in the State of New York, now known as New Lebanon, where he died in 1812.

This John Tilden, the grandfather of Samuel J. Tilden, served in the French war, and brought back with him from the capture of Louisburg a French musket, with which his distinguished grandson had his first and last experience as a sporting man.

"It was a smooth bore," so he tells the story, "flaring at