Sir Jahleel Brenton was the eldest son of Rear Admiral Brenton, a native of Rhode Island. The family appear to have emigrated to America in the early part of the reign of Charles the First, probably from apprehension of the coming troubles of the times. William Brenton, who settled as a merchant at Boston, in Massachusets, about the year 1634, came from Hammersmith, in England. He must have been a person of some wealth and consideration, as he became a freeman, and a select man of the Colony, the same year; and in the following year, 1635, was chosen a deputy of the general court. He afterwards removed to Rhode Island, and then returned to England, from whence he finally removed from Hammersmith, with his whole family, consisting of three sons, Jahleel, William, and John, and settled at Newport, in Rhode Island. In 1663 he became Deputy Governor of the Colony of Rhode Island, and Providence Plantations in New England, under the charter granted to that Colony by Charles the Second, in the fourteenth year of his reign. In 1667-8 he became Governor of the Colony, and died in the year 1674. Jahleel, his eldest son, resided in Newport, Rhode Island. A great part of his father’s property was bequeathed to him; and in the year 1691 he was appointed by commission, in the second year of William and Mary, Collector, Surveyor, and Searcher of the Customs within the Colonies of New England. William, the second son, great grandfather to the subject of the present memoir, took up his residence either at Taunton in Massachusets, or at Bristol in Rhode Island, though some doubts exist as to which of these places became his home. He married Martha Church, by whom he had three sons, Jahleel (grandfather to the Baronet), Ebenezer, and Benjamin. Of John Brenton, the third son of William, nothing farther is known except that he went to a settlement called Bellevoir, in New England; and was not afterwards heard of. Jahleel, the collector, died at Newport unmarried, about the year 1732, and bequeathed the greater part of his large estates in New England to his nephew Jahleel, who had married in the year 1714-15, Frances, daughter of Samuel Cranstoun, who was Governor of the Colony, and who died in 1727, aged 68 years. He was the son of John Cranstoun, the former Governor of the Colony, who was lineally descended from the Scottish Baron, James Lord Cranstoun, as appears by the inscription on his tombstone in the churchyard at Newport, in Rhode Island.