I attentive observer of the great and philanthropic movements of the day and a most liberal supporter of every worthy cause whose claims were brought to his notice.

■ A man of noble impulses and clear convictions, he was no less decided in the rebuke of injustice and iniquity that in the approval of that which was good.

The uprightness and elevation, the kindliness and generosity of his nature, his fine intellectual gifts and

HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

high culture, and with all an unaffected humility, the fruit of true religion, made him the marked example of a Christian gentleman.

SAMUEL .TONES TILDEN.

In an old-fashioned frame dwelling-house still standing, though considerably older than our Federal Constitution, Mr. Tilden was born on the 9th of February, 1814. The old homestead, where four generations of the family have been reared, fronts upon the i long street which constitutes the back-bone of the village of New Lebanon, in the county of Columbia, in the State of New York.

Mr. Tilden's ancestry may be traced back to the latter part of the sixteenth century and to the county ^ of Kent, in England, where the name is still most ' honorably associated with the army, the navy and the church. In 1634 Nathaniel Tilden was among the Puritans who left Kent to settle in America. Eleven years previous he had been mayor of Tenterden. He was succeeded in that office by his cousin John, as he had been preceded by his uncle John in 1585 and 1600. He removed with his family to Scituate, in the colony of Massachusetts, in 1634. He was one of the commissioners to locate that town, and ' the first recorded conveyance of any of its soil was made to him. His brother Joseph was one of the merchant adventurers of Loudon who fitted out the " Mayflower." This Nathaniel Tilden married Hannah Bourne, one of whose sisters married a brother of Governor Winslow and another a son of Governor Bradford.