Grover Cleveland was born in Caldwell, 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 descendant William
Cleveland was a silversmith and watchmaker at Norwich, Conn. Richard
Falley Cleveland, son of the latter named, was graduated at Yale in
1824, was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry in 1829, and in the same
year married Ann Neal, daughter of a Baltimore merchant of Irish birth.
These two were the parents of Grover Cleveland. The Presbyterian
parsonage at Caldwell, where he was born, was first occupied by the
Rev. Stephen Grover, in whose honor he was named; but the first name was
early dropped, and he has been since known as Grover Cleveland. When
he was 4 years old his father accepted a call to Fayetteville, near
Syracuse, N.Y., where the son had common and academic schooling, and
afterwards was a clerk in a country store. The removal of the family
to Clinton, Oneida County, gave him additional educational advantages
in the academy there. In his seventeenth year he became a clerk and an
assistant teacher in the New York Institution for the Blind, in New York
City, in which his elder brother, William, a Presbyterian clergyman,
was then a teacher. In 1855 he left Holland Patent, in Oneida County,
where his mother at that time resided, to go to the 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
aid him in the compilation of a volume of the American Herd Book,
receiving for six weeks' service $60. He afterwards, and while studying
law, 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 $4 per week for his work.
He was admitted to the bar in 1859, but for three years longer remained
with the firm that first employed him, acting as managing clerk at a
salary of $600, a part of which he devoted to the support of his widowed
mother, who died in 1882. Was appointed assistant district attorney of
Erie County January 1, 1863, and held the office for three years. At
this time the Civil War was raging. Two of his brothers were in the
Army, and his mother and sisters were largely dependent upon him for
support. Unable himself to enlist, he borrowed money and sent a
substitute to the war, and it was not till long after the war that
he was able to repay the loan. In 1865, at the age of 28, he was the
Democratic candidate for district attorney, but was defeated by the
Republican candidate, his intimate friend, Lyman K. Bass. He then became
the law partner of Isaac V. Vanderpool, and in 1869 became a member of
the firm of Lanning, Cleveland & Folsom. He continued a successful
practice 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, Lyman K. Bass, the firm
being Bass, Cleveland & Bissell, and, after the forced retirement,
from failing health, of Mr. Bass, Cleveland & Bissell. In 1881 he was
nominated the 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. He entered upon the office
January 1, 1882, and soon became known as the "Veto Mayor," using that
prerogative fearlessly in checking unwise, illegal, and extravagant
expenditures. By his vetoes he saved the city nearly $1,000,000 in the
first half year of his administration. He opposed giving $500 of the
taxpayers' money to the Firemen's Benevolent Society on the ground
that such appropriation was not permissible under the terms of the
State constitution and the charter of the city. He vetoed a resolution
diverting $500 from the Fourth of July appropriations to the observance
of Decoration Day for the same reason, and immediately subscribed
one-tenth of the sum wanted for the purpose. His administration of the
office won tributes to his integrity and ability from the press and the
people irrespective of party. On the second day of the Democratic State
convention at Syracuse, September 22, 1882, on the third ballot, was
nominated for governor in opposition to the Republican candidate,
Charles J. Folger, then Secretary of the United States Treasury. He had
the united support of his own party, while the Republicans were not
united on his opponent, and at the election in November he received a
plurality over Mr. Folger of 192,854. His State administration was only
an expansion of the fundamental principles that controlled his official
action while mayor of Buffalo. In a letter written to his brother on
the day of his election he announced a policy he intended to adopt,
and afterwards carried out, "that is, to make the matter a business
engagement between the people of the State and myself, in which the
obligation on my side is to perform the duties assigned me with an
eye single to the interest of my employers." The Democratic national
convention met at Chicago July 8, 1884. On July 11 he was nominated as
their candidate for President. The Republicans made James G. Blaine
their candidate, while Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts, was the
Labor and Greenback candidate, and John P. St. John, of Kansas, was
the Prohibition candidate. At the election, November 4, Mr. Cleveland
received 219 and Mr. Blaine 182 electoral votes. He was unanimously
renominated for the Presidency by the national Democratic convention
in St. Louis on June 6, 1888. At the election in November he received
168 electoral votes, while 233 were cast for Benjamin Harrison, the
Republican candidate. Of the popular vote, however, he received
5,540,329, and Mr. Harrison received 5,439,853. At the close of his
Administration, March 4, 1889, he retired to New York City, where he
reentered upon the practice of his profession. It soon became evident,
however, that he would be prominently urged as a candidate for
renomination in 1892. At the national Democratic convention which met
in Chicago June 21, 1892, he received more than two-thirds of the votes
on the first ballot. At the election in November he received 277 of
the electoral votes, while Mr. Harrison received 145 and Mr. James B.
Weaver, the candidate of the People's Party, 22. Of the popular vote
Mr. Cleveland received 5,553,142, Mr. Harrison 5,186,931, and Mr.
Weaver 1,030,128. He retired from office March 4, 1897, and removed to
Princeton, N.J., where he has since resided. He is the first of our
Presidents who served a second term without being elected as his own
successor. President Cleveland was married in the White House on June 2,
1886, to Miss Frances Folsom, daughter of his deceased friend and
partner, Oscar Folsom, of the Buffalo bar. Mrs. Cleveland was the
youngest (except the wife of Mr. Madison) of the many mistresses of the
White House, having been born in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1864. She is the
first wife of a President married in the White House, and the first to
give birth to a child there, their second daughter (Esther) having been
born in the Executive Mansion in 1893.