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.

Samuel J., after a suitable preparatory education ; at Williamstown, Massachusetts, was entered at Yale j College in the class of 1833, where, however, in consequence of ill health, he was not able to complete

the course. He concluded his collegiate studies at the New York University, and then took the course of law in that institution, at the same time entering the law-office of the late John W. Edmunds, then a prominent member of the New York bar. While yet in his teens he was a watchful student of the political situation, and tradition has preserved many interesting stories of his triumphs, both of speech and pen, in the political arena. Young and obscure as he then was, Presidents .lackson and Van Buren had few more effiective champions in this State of the great measures of their respective administrations than this stripling from New Lebanon.

He was admitted to the bar in 1841. Four years before, and when only twenty-three years of age, he delivered a speech in Columbia County onthesubject of " Prices and Wages," which not only attracted the attention and won the admiration of the leading political economists of that time, but is to-day one of perhaps the half-dozen most profound, comprehensive and instructive papers on that complicated subject now in print in any language.