To this messianic hope of politics may be ascribed what is in some respects the most remarkable career in the political history of the United States.
The rapid and fortuitous rise of Grover Cleveland to political eminence is without a parallel in the records of American statesmanship, notwithstanding many instances of public distinction attained from humble beginnings.
The antecedents of Cleveland were Americans of the best type.

He was descended from a colonial stock which had settled in the Connecticut Valley.

His earliest ancestor of whom there is any exact knowledge was Aaron Cleveland, an Episcopal clergyman, who died at East Haddam, Connecticut, in 1757, after founding a family which in every generation furnished recruits to the ministry.

It argues a hereditary disposition for independent judgment that among these there was a marked variation in denominational choice.

Aaron Cleveland was so strong in his attachment to the Anglican church that to be ordained he went to England--under the conditions of travel in those days a hard, serious undertaking.