CHAPTER I.

A

BIRTH AND PARENTAGE.

ZRO Benjamin Franklin Hildreth was born of worthy parents in the town of Chelsea. county of Orange and state of Vermont, on the 29th day of February. (leap year.) A. D.. 1816. He was the eldest of a family of twelve childrensix sons and six daughters. At an early age he manifested a fondness for letters, and there can be no doubt that his name, (Benjamin Franklin, for whom his father entertained a high estimation.) had an influence in shaping his subsequent

career.

Of his ancestry but little need be said. His father. Daniel Hildreth, was born in the town of Pepperell, in Massachusetts, on May 2d. 1783, and at an early age removed, with his parents, to the town of Corinth. Orange county. Vermont. He afterwards, and for several years. resided in Haverhill. New Hampshire, where he was an inmate of the family of John Page; the John Page, afterwards a Senator in Congress and Governor of New Hampshire. (a son of the former.) was Daniel Hildreth's life-long friend.

James Hildreth, father of Daniel Hildreth, and

His

grandfather of the subject of this memoir. was of the old Puritan stock and of English origin. family were brought up after the straightest manner of the Puritans, and Daniel, his son, imbibed and retained through life many of the characteristics of these founders of a pure morality and pious enthusiasm, and sought in his turn to impress the same upon his children. The mother of Daniel Hildreth, and wife of James Hildreth, was Esther Fletcher, daughter of Lieutenant Timothy Fletcher, of Westford, Massachusetts; a gentleman of some note at the time of and previous to the Revolutionary war, and whose family name, as well as that of Hildreth, has been somewhat distinguished to the present time. Daniel Webster's first wife was of that family, and their oldest son bore the cognomen of Fletcher Webster.

It appears that, many centuries ago, religious persecution in Switzerland drove out from that land of William Tell certain families named Heildreich. These refugees found an asylum in the northern part of England and became agriculturists. Still wishing to enjoy their own religious opinions, instead of espousing the polity of the Church of England or Episcopalians, they became Dissenters or as they were nicknamed, Puritans.“ From year to year. after the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock in 1620, small companies of these English Puritans would cross the ocean and join their brethren in America. Among these immigrants, in 1640, was one Richard Heildreich. who, at first, settled in Woburn, near Boston, and

afterwards in Chelmsford, on the Merrimac river, where his body now lies buried in the Chelmsford cemetery, three or four miles above Lowell. From this Richard Heildreich descended all the Hildreths in America.

In the public records of the General Court (Legislature) of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. in New England," now in the State Library at Des Moines, Iowa, vol. 4, part 2d, page 100, is found this paragraph:

1664. May 18. In answer to the petition of Richard Heildreich, of Chelmsford, humbly craving the favor of this Court to consider his necessitous condicon and grant him some lands, this Court judgeth it meete to grant him one hundred and fifty acres of vpland and meadow where it may conveniently be found, not pjudjciall to any plantation."

The above is the first mention of the name of Hildreth to be found in these Records." There can be no doubt that Richard is a family name. and that the above-named Richard Heildreich was the ancestor of Richard Hildreth the historian of the United States, and who was at one time editor of the Boston Atlas" newspaper.

It appears that the grant of land asked for was afterwards confirmed, for on page 441 of the abovenamed volume is found the following record:

12 October, 1669. The grant of this Court to Richard Heildreich of Chelmsford of one hundred & fifty acres of wast land lajd out by David Fisk, surveyor and bounded wth Concord lyne on the South-East; Capt. Daniel Gookins' farm northerly and the wilderness elsewhere surrounding, according to a plat returned, and is on file with the Rec

ords of this Court. wh the Court allowes and approoves of.“

The above are the only two instances in which the name of Hildreth occurs in these volumes. which only bring the history of Massachusetts down to about the close of the 16th century.

After leaving Switzerland the orthography of the name underwent various changes, as it passed through England and came down from one generation to another in America. It is said there are

many families of the name of Heildreich in Switzerland at the present day.

CHAPTER II.

IN

SKETCH BY RICHARD HILDRETH.

N the rooms of the New England Historical and Genealogical Association in Boston there are several publications which give more or less information regarding the history of the Hildreths. From one of these works the following article is taken:

ORIGIN AND GENEALOGY

OF

THE AMERICAN HILDRETHS,

WRITTEN APRIL 2, 1856,

BY RICHARD HILDRETH, HISTORIAN.

The Hildreths may fairly be reckoned among the earliest settlers who migrated from England to North America. Those of New England, whence there are offshoots in several of the Western and some of the Southern States, are probably all descended from a single ancestor, one Richard Hildreth, whose name I bear and from whom I am the sixth in descent.

The first notice of this Richard Hildreth, (or Hildrick, Heildreich, Heildreth, as the name is variously spelled in the old colonial records) is his