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. Among the associates of Joseph Tilden in fitting out the " Mayflower" was Timothy Hatherby, who afterward married the widow of Nathaniel Tilden, and was a leading citizen of Scituate until ex- I pelled from public life for refusing to prosecute the Quakers.

Governor Tilden's grandfather, John Tilden, settled in Columbia County, since then uninterruptedly the residence of this branch of the Tilden family. The Governor's mother was descended from William Jones, Lieutenant-Governor of the colony of New Haven, who, in all the histories of Connecticut, is represented to have been the son of Col. John Jones, one of the regicide judges of Charles the First, who is said to have married a sister of Oliver Cromwell and a cousin of John Hamden. The Governor's father, a farmer and merchant of New Lebanon, w'as a man of notable judgment and practical sense and the accepted oracle of the county upon all matters of public concern, while his opinion was also eagerly sought and justly valued by all his neighbors, but by none more than by the late President Van Buren, who, till his death, was one of his most cherished and intimate personal friends.