“With most of them, it was a thing to earn. Why, the thing that I
knew more about than anything else, as I grew from year to year, was
the fact that I had nothing to expect, and must look out for myself.
I can’t tell you how clear my parents made this point to me. It
absolutely glittered, so plain was it.”
“Your parents were Americans?”
“Yes. I was born at Peekskill, in 1834.”
Although Mr. Depew modestly refrains from discussing his ancestry, he
comes from the best New England stock. He descends, through remote
paternal ancestors, from French Huguenots, who were among those who
came to America in the early days of the country, and who founded the
village of New Rochelle, in Westchester county. His mother, Martha
Mitchell, was of illustrious and patriotic New England descent, being
a member of the family to which belonged Roger Sherman, a signer of
the Declaration of Independence; and he is a lineal descendant of the
Rev. Josiah Sherman, chaplain of the Seventh Connecticut Continental
infantry, and of Gabriel Ogden, of the New Jersey militia, both of whom
served in the American Revolution.
“Had you any superior advantages in the way of money, books, or
training?” I continued.
“If you want to call excellent training a superior advantage I had it.
Training was a great point with us. We trained with the plow, the ax,
and almost any other implement we could lay our hands on. I might even
call the switch used at our house an early advantage, and, I might say,
superior to any other in our vicinity. I had some books, but our family
was not rich, even for those times. We were comfortably situated,
nothing more.”
“Do you owe more to your general reading than you do to your early
school training?”
“Yes, I think so. I attended the school in our village regularly, until
I went to college; but I was not distinguished for scholarship, except
on the ballground.”
“Do you attribute much of your success in life to physical strength?”
“It is almost indispensable.”