S

CHAPTER I.

ANCESTRY.

And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine!
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveler betwixt life and death.
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength and skill,
A perfect woman nobly planned
To warn, to comfort and command.
And yet a spirit, pure and bright
With something of an angel-light.

Wordsworth.

CIENTISTS tell us that the career of any living thing

is the product of three forces,-ancestry, environment and the vital force of the individual itself. Few persons better illustrate these well-known principles of science than Mary A. Woodbridge, one of the foremost leaders of the greatest reform movement of our century.

So great a man as Matthew Henry has said that "neither wisdom nor grace runs in the blood." And yet heredity is one of nature's divine laws, and "blood will tell." A great character is not formed in one generation. Mirabeau, when asked at what age he would commence the education of a boy, is reported to have replied: “I would begin twenty years before he is born by educating his mother." To a similar question, the late Oliver Wendell Holmes replied: "I would begin one hundred years before he is born by educating his great-grandmother."

The latter is the more correct answer. The truth is, we not only ought to begin, but we, in very fact, do begin to

lay the foundations of temperament and character a hundred years before a little immortal puts in his appearance on this planet. For that reason one's ancestry is a matter of no slight importance. That of Mrs. Woodbridge was all that could be desired for a reformer, coming as she did from the purest New England stock, to whom the atmosphere of agitation and reform seems to be the native, vital air.

The writer is indebted to the noble brother of Mrs. Woodbridge, Col. George M. Brayton, of the U. S. A., for the genealogy of their parents. With that thoroughness and zeal which have characterized all his military career, he has traced the lineage of the family back to the eleventh century. From him I get the following concerning the father.

BRAYTON-ORIGIN OF THE NAME.

Bretons are of French origin of Norman extraction. The Breton families came into England with William the Conqueror, as I find in an early pedigree of the Bretons in 1197. This is the first date therein, and there are four generations at the beginning of the pedigree previous to the date 1197.

The name Breton is derived from a province in France called Bretagne. The armorial bearings are the same in France as in England, and the name in France is Le Breton.

BRETON OF TRENTON.

Baker's History of Northamptonshire, Vol. I, page 220, has a long pedigree of the Breton families, running back from four generations before 1197. The pedigree seems to have been prepared from papers in the family of William Le Breton in 1197. This pedigree brings the family down to the year 1708, with arms.

Burke's armorial bearings has the coat of arms (which I have) with the name Brayton, which is the only English work I have found with the name Brayton." But in the same book under Breton is precisely the same coat of arms and crest as Brayton. This I consider the best proof that can be had of the origin of the family name-that Brayton