The first ancestor, by the name of Garfield, of whom the family have any record, is Edward Garfield, a Puritan, who, for the sake of conscience, in 1636, left his home near the boundary line of England and Wales, and joined the colony of the distinguished John Winthrop, at Watertown, Massachusetts. He appears to have been a plain farmer, of deep, religious convictions, and much respected by the community in which he lived. Of his ancestry, only two facts are known. One is that no book of the peerage or list of English nobility ever contained the name of Garfield. The other is that, at some time in the past, possibly during the Crusades, the family had received, or adopted, a coat of arms. The device was a golden shield crossed by three crimson bars; in one corner a cross; in another a heart; above the shield an arm and hand grasping a sword. A Latin motto, “_In cruce vinco_,”—“In the cross I conquer,”—completed the emblem. It is probable that the family had been soldiers, not unlikely in a religious war. The wife of Edward Garfield was a fair-haired girl from Germany.—To the brave heart and earnest temper of the Welshman, was added the persistence and reflectiveness of the German mind. Of their immediate descendants, but little can be told. Like the ancestor they were “To fortune and to fame unknown.” But they were honest and respected citizens—tillers of the soil—not infrequently holding some local position as selectman or captain of militia. Five of the lineal descendants are said to sleep in the beautiful cemetery in Watertown, “careless alike of sunshine and of storm.” Tracing the family history down to the stirring and memorable period of the American Revolution, the name which has now become historic emerges from obscurity. The spirit of Puritanism, which had braved the rigors of life in the colonies rather than abate one jot of its intellectual liberty, nourished by hardship and strengthened by misfortune, had been handed down by the law of inheritance through eight peaceful generations. It was the spirit which resented oppression, demanded liberty, and fought for principle till the last dollar was spent, and the last drop of blood was shed in her cause. We might have calculated on the descendants of the Puritan colonist being in the front of battle from the very outbreak of the War for Independence. It was so. They were there. They were the kind of men to be there. Abraham Garfield, great-uncle of the President, took part in the first real battle of the Revolution, the fight at Concord Bridge, which fixed the status of the Colonies as that of rebellion. On the fourth day after the bloodletting the following affidavit was drawn up and sworn to before a magistrate: LEXINGTON, April 23, 1775.