Belfast University, one of the foremost institutions of learning in
Ireland. Marrying an American, Miss Malvina Stone, soon after his
arrival, he became the father of several children. Chester was the
eldest of two sons, having four sisters older and two younger than
himself. While fulfilling his clerical duties as the pastor,
successively, of a number of Baptist churches in New York State, Dr.
Arthur edited for several years The Antiquarian, and wrote a work on
Family Names, which is highly prized by genealogists. Of Scotch-Irish
descent, he was a man of great force of character, impatient of
restraint, at home in a controversy, and frank in the expression of his
opinions. He was a pronounced emancipationist, although he never
expected to see the overthrow of slavery, which it was his good fortune
to witness, as his life was spared until the twenty-seventh of October,
1875, when he died at Newtonville, near Albany. He was a personal friend
of Gerrit Smith, and they had participated in the organization of the
New York State Anti-Slavery Society, which was dispersed by a mob during
its first meeting at Utica, on the twenty-first of October, 1835 (the
day on which William Lloyd Garrison was mobbed in Boston, and was lodged
in jail for his own protection). A friend of the slave from conscience
and from conviction, Dr. Arthur was never backward in expressing his
convictions, and his children imbibed his teachings.

When a lad, young Arthur enjoyed at home the tutelage of his father,
whose thorough knowledge of the classics enabled him to lay the
foundation of his son's future education broad and deep. He entered
Union College in 1845, when only fifteen years of age. His collegiate
course was full of promise, and every successive year he was declared to
be one of those who had taken "maximum honors," although he was
compelled to absent himself during two winters, when he taught school to
earn the requisite funds for defraying his expenses, without drawing