I never maintained any considerable intimacy with Curtis, although I have a few letters from him, expressing his regard for some of my kindred or his interest and sympathy in something I had said or done. These I value exceedingly. One of the very last articles he wrote for _Harper's Weekly,_ written just before his death, contains a far too kind estimate of my public service. The Concord quality has come down with its people from the first settlement. The town was founded by Peter Bulkeley. He was a clergyman at Odell in Bedfordshire, where the church over which he was settled is still standing. He was a gentleman of good family and of a considerable estate which he spent for the benefit of the people whom he led into the wilderness. He encountered the hostility of Laud and, to use the phrase of that time, was "silenced for non-conformity." With Major Simon Willard, he made a bargain with the Indians, just to both parties, and with which both parties were perfectly satisfied, which rendered the name of Concord so appropriate, although in fact the name was given to the settlement before the company left Boston. That pulpit was occupied by Bulkeley and his descendants either by blood or marriage, from 1635 to 1696; from 1738 to 1841; and from 1882 to 1893. I was able some forty years ago to settle in Concord a matter which had puzzled English historians, as to the legitimacy of the famous statesman and Chief Justice, Oliver St. John. Lord Campbell, in his "Lives of the Chief Justices," says: "It is a curious circumstance that there should be a dispute about the parentage of such a distinguished individual, who flourished so recently. Lord Clarendon, who knew him intimately from his youth, who practised with him in the Court of King's Bench, who sat in the House of Commons with him, and who was both associated with him and opposed to him in party strife, repeatedly represents him as illegitimate; and states that he was 'a natural son of the house of Bolingbroke.' Lord Bacon's account of his origin is equivocal--calling him 'a gentleman as it seems of an ancient house and name.' By genealogists and heralds a legitimate pedigree is assigned to him, deducing his descent in the right male line from William St. John, who came in with the Conqueror; but some of them describe him as the son of Sir John St. John, of Lydiard Tregose in Wiltshire, and others as the son of Oliver St. John of Cagshoe in Bedfordshire, and they differ equally respecting his mother. Lord Clarendon could hardly be mistaken on such a point, and I cannot help suspecting that the contrary assertions proceed from a desire to remove the bar sinister from the shield of a Chief Justice." Lord Campbell has had diligent search made in the archives of Oxford and Lincoln's Inn, but does not find anything to change his opinion.