racy
disposes every man to forget his ancestors. When the Hon. Stephen A.
Douglas was once asked to prepare an account of his career for a
biographical history of Congress, he chose to omit all but the barest
reference to his forefathers.[1] Possibly he preferred to leave the
family tree naked, that his unaided rise to eminence might the more
impress the chance reader. Yet the records of the Douglass family are
not uninteresting.[2] The first of the name to cross the ocean was
William Douglass, who was born in Scotland and who wedded Mary Ann,
daughter of Thomas Marble of Northampton. Just when this couple left
Old England is not known, but the birth of a son is recorded in
Boston, in the year 1645. Soon after this event they removed to New
London, preferring, it would seem, to try their luck in an outlying
settlement, for this region was part of the Pequot country. Somewhat
more than a hundred years later, Benajah Douglass, a descendant of
this pair and grandfather of the subject of this sketch, pushed still
farther into the interior, and settled in Rensselaer County, in the
province of New York. The marriage of Benajah Douglass to Martha
Arnold, a descendant of Governor William Arnold of Rhode Island, has
an interest for those who are disposed to find Celtic qualities in the
grandson, for the Arnolds were of Welsh stock, and may be supposed to
have revived the strain in the Douglass blood.

Tradition has made Benajah Douglass a soldier in the war of the
Revolution, but authentic records go no farther back than the year
1795, when he removed with his family to Brandon, Vermont. There he
purchased a farm of about four hundred acres, which he must have
cultivated with some degree of skill, since it seems to have yielded
an ample competency. He is described as a man of genial, buoyant
disposition, with much self-confidence. He was five times chosen
selectman of Brandon; and five times he was elected to represent the
town in the General Assembly. The physical qualities of the grandson
may well have been a family inheritance, since of Benajah we read that
he was of medium height, with large head and body, short neck, and
short limbs.[3]

The portrait of Benajah's son is far less distinct. He was a graduate
of Middlebury College and a physician by profession. He married Sally
Fisk, the daughter of a well-to-do farmer in Brandon, by whom he had
two children, the younger of whom was Stephen Arnold Douglass, born
April 23, 1