I. Aaron Cleveland, an early settler in the valley of the Connecticut.
He was liberally educated, and, ardently devoted to the interests of the
Church, he determined to take holy orders, and returned to England for
confirmation therein. Coming back to America he settled in the ministry
at East Haddam, Conn. Some fifteen years later, in August, 1757, he
died, while on a visit to Philadelphia, at the residence of his friend,
Benjamin Franklin, then publisher of the _Pennsylvania Gazette_, who
spoke of him, in an obituary notice in his paper, as "a gentleman of a
humane and pious disposition, indefatigable in his ministry, easy and
affable in his conversation, open and sincere in his friendship, and
above every species of meanness and dissimulation."

II. Aaron Cleveland, born at East Haddam, Conn., February 9, 1744. He
was a hatter by trade and located in Norwich, which town he represented
in the Legislature, where he introduced a bill for the abolition of
slavery, of which institution he was a determined opponent. Subsequently
he became a Congregational clergyman, and a power in that denomination.
He died at New Haven in 1815.

III. William Cleveland, second son of the above, a silversmith by
occupation, also dwelt in Norwich. His wife was Margaret Falley. He was
prosperous in business, respected in the community, and deacon of the
church of which his father had been pastor for a quarter of a century
previous to his decease.

IV. Richard Falley Cleveland, second son of William, born in 1804,
graduated from Yale in 1824 with high honors. He, too, became a
clergyman, having adopted the Presbyterian faith, and pursued his
studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, after serving a year as a