A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [2]
Grover set himself a deadline: Come next spring, at the latest, he was going to be out of Holland Patent.
From nowhere Grover received a message from Ingham Townsend, a wealthy local property owner with a reputation as a thoughtful benefactor who had offered financial assistance to several promising young men from Holland Patent. Townsend was also a deacon in the Presbyterian church where Grover’s father had been minister. Richard Cleveland died in 1853, at age forty-nine, of acute peritonitis brought on by a gastric ulcer, and Townsend had a genuine interest in doing all he could for the Cleveland family. So it happened that Townsend met with Grover, was very impressed with him, and offered to pay the boy’s way through college. There was one catch: Grover had to make a commitment to enter the ministry following his graduation. Right then, Grover had to say no. That was his father’s and his brother William’s calling, not his. There was further discussion, and an idea came to Grover “like an inspiration.” He now presented it to Townsend. He wanted to go west, to the booming city of Cleveland, Ohio.
“It’s just the place for a young man to establish himself in,” he told Townsend.
Cleveland was the city founded by Grover’s forebear, Moses Cleaveland, a Connecticut lawyer and Revolutionary War officer. In 1796, he led a surveying party across Lake Erie to explore the Western Reserve, territory claimed by the state of Connecticut in what is now northeastern Ohio. At the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, General Cleaveland beheld a magnificent plain and proclaimed it to be the site of a settlement. It was named in honor of the leader of the expedition.
In 1820, Cleaveland’s population had reached just one hundred and fifty. By 1854, the city’s name had been shortened to “Cleveland.” This came about because the editor of the local newspaper thought “Cleveland” looked cleaner than “Cleaveland” on the masthead. Cleveland’s population had reached thirty thousand, and the city was on its way to becoming a vital port that, via the Erie Canal, linked the West to the Atlantic Ocean.
Deciding on the city of Cleveland made sense, even if, as Grover gamely acknowledged, he knew not a single soul there. Settling in a boomtown named for a distinguished kinsman would set him apart from all the other determined young men who were flocking to Ohio.
“I was attracted by the name. It seemed that it was my town because it had my name,” Grover later said.
As Townsend listened to Grover sketch out his shrewd plan, he must have admired the magnitude of the young man’s ambition. Right then he offered Grover the sum of $25 to finance his way west. It was a loan, but one that Townsend assured Grover he need never pay back. There was, however, one condition; and as did anything associated with Ingham Townsend, it came positioned as an act of philanthropy.
“If you ever meet with a young man in a similar condition, give it to him if you have it to spare,” Townsend said.
Townsend handed Grover the $25 and a promissory note. He would forever be grateful for the money. It was, Grover would say many years later, “my start in life.” Townsend could never have imagined that the simple gesture he made that day would have such profound consequences in American history.
Grover said good-bye to his family. His mother, Ann, was a fine-boned, pretty Southern belle, the daughter of a wealthy book publisher from Baltimore, when she had married Richard Cleveland at age twenty-three. Coming north as the bride of a young Presbyterian minister had been a culture shock. Though she had been advised in no uncertain terms not to take a black servant from