Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. III.djvu/290

 242 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS schooling, and afterward was a clerk in a country store. The removal of the family to Clinton, Oneida County, gave Grover additional educa tional advantages in the academy there. In his sev enteenth year he became a clerk and an assistant teacher in the New York institution for the blind in New York city, in which his elder brother, Wil liam, an alumnus of Hamilton college, now a Pres byterian clergyman at Forest Port, N. Y., was then a teacher. In 1855 Grover left Holland Patent, in Oneida county, where his mother then resided, to go to the west in search of employment. On his way he stopped at Black Rock, now a part of Buf falo, where his uncle, Lewis F. Allen, induced him to remain and aid him in the compilation of a vol ume of the &quot;American Herd-Book,&quot; receiving for six weeks service $60. He afterward assisted in the preparation of sev eral other volumes of this work, and the preface to the fifth volume (1861) acknowledges his serv ices. In August, 1855, he secured a place as clerk and copyist for the law firm of Rogers, Bowen & Rogers, in Buffalo, began to read Blackstone, and in the autumn of that year was receiving four dol lars a week for his work. He was admitted to the bar in 1859, but for three years longer he remained with the firm that first employed him, acting as managing clerk at a salary of $600, soon advanced to $1,000, a part of which he devoted to the support