He was in the sixth generation from Edward Rawson, who was the first of the name to emigrate from England, and who settled in Boston, Mass., in 1632, and was Secretary of the Massachusetts Colony for 35 years. The wife of Edward Rawson was Rachel Perne, who was a grand-daughter of a sister of Edmund Grindall, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and he was so faithful a monitor of that energetic soverign, that he incurred her displeasure by his boldness in telling her what he believed to be her religious duties to God and her subjects. Bacon styled Archbishop Grindall "The greatest and gravest prelate of the land." This reference to ancestors is not made with the idea that persons are entitled to honor on account of a virtuous ancestry; on the contrary, we think that honorable and virtuous parents are disgraced by those of their children who do not practise in their own lives the precepts that they received in their childhood and youth.
Nathaniel jr. acquired, mostly in Milford, an education which fitted him for teaching in the common schools of that period. An old ciphering-book, which he made in his school days, contains evidence that he mastered, in an unusual degree, the processes of mathematical science, and also that he had a genius for artistic pictorial illustrations of his studies. At what time he became religious is not now known. He studied theology with the Rev. Dr. Crane of Northbridge, Mass., and about 1808 or 1809 was licensed to preach by the Mendon Association of Congregational Churches.