an account of his sale he was liberally rewarded for his services. It was the first considerable sum of money he had ever received from his own earning. This money enabled him to visit the national capital and the grave of Washington. While his brother was finishing his business at Baltimore, Galusha walked from Alexandria to Mount Vernon, returning the same day; and the next day he made the tour of Washington, visiting all the principal points of interest. On reaching home, he assisted his brother Frederic in the country store established by his mother.
In the spring of 1836, in accordance with the wishes of his mother, he entered Franklin academy at Hartford, Susquehanna county, Pennsylvania, and in September, 1840, he entered Amherst college, Massachusetts. He was graduated A.B., 1844, receiving high honors, with a reputation as an able debater and extemporaneous speaker. He read law in the office of Streeter and Little, at Montrose, 1845-47, and was admitted to the bar, April 17, 1847. He was a partner of David Wilmot, at Towanda, 1848-49. Mr. Grow declined the unanimous nomination of the Democratic party of Susquehanna county for representation in the state legislature in August, 1850. He engaged in farming, surveying and lumbering, in order to regain his failing health, living the exposed life of the tan bark peeler, field surveyor and farmer. In 1850-51 he cleared and sowed with wheat and rye 100 acres of land which he had purchased and on which he had peeled the hemlock bark the year before. In October, 1850, he was elected, as a Free Soil Democrat, representative from the twelfth congressional district of Pennsylvania to the thirty-second Congress, as successor to his law partner who had represented the district, 1845-51. Mr. Grow at the time was almost unknown beyond the county of his residence. He made a short canvass, having been nominated only ten days before election, by reason of the withdrawal of the two candidates previously nominated. He was elected by 1,200 majority. When he took his seat in the thirty-second Congress, December, 1851, he was the youngest member of that congress. On March 30, 1852, he made his maiden speech in the Old Hall of the house of representatives, on "Man's Right to the Soil," and he thereafter kept before congress for the next ten years the policy of the government granting its public lands in limited quantity to actual settlers, until he succeeded in his purpose by the passage of the Free Homestead law.
