Their intention was to make a farmer of him; but the intolerable slowness of an ox-team, in ploughing fifteen acres of summer fallow three times over in a single season, so disgusted the lad that he became restless. His uncle saw it, and upon consultation with the father they decided to send him to school to prepare for Yale College, which was accordingly done. He often said, “Oxen sent me to college.” David’s father’s name was Nathaniel. He was also a blacksmith, and the anvil of both father and son stood upon the stump of that old oak under which John Davenport preached his first sermon to the New Haven Colony. He married a Sperry, “a pious woman,” whose mother was a Roberts from Forlallt, Cardiganshire, Wales. From her, his great great-grandmother, came the fervid Welsh blood with which Henry Ward was always so well pleased. Joseph was the father of Nathaniel. His father’s name was John, of whom tradition says that he was one of those who in the fall of 1637 accompanied Samuel Eaton in his explorations for a suitable location for the colony of John Davenport, that had just come over and was then staying at Boston; and that he was one of the very few men who lived through the winter in the poor hut that had been built at “Quinnipiack,” New Haven, that they might pre-empt the territory and be in readiness to welcome the colony in the following spring. He was the only son of Hannah Beecher, whose husband, born in Kent, England, died just before the colony sailed. She was about to abandon the enterprise, but, being a midwife and likely to be of service to the youthful colony, they promised her her husband’s share in the town plot if she would come. They kept their word, and it was in her lot that the historic oak just mentioned stood. Her business seems not to have been remarkably lucrative, for at her death her estate inventoried only £55 5s. 6d. One earlier mention of the family was found by Mr. Beecher in the British Museum during his visit to England in 1863, and copied in his diary: “Visitation of Kent, 16,279 Brit. Museum. “Henry Beecher, alderman and sheriff of London 1570, ob’t 1571.” Apparently of more than the average intellectual ability of their class, there was one feature in which the men whom we have described markedly excelled—namely, in their physical strength. The standard of measurement was peculiar to those early times, and may not be as well understood by us; yet it even now conveys the idea of great stalwartness. David, it was said, could lift a barrel of cider and carry it into the cellar; Nathaniel, his father, was not quite as strong, yet he could throw a barrel of cider into a cart; while Joseph exceeded them all, for he could lift the barrel and drink out of the bung-hole. Of Henry, the sheriff, no description has been found.