Hayes wrote: "I have always thought of myself as Scotch, but of the fathers of my family who came to America about thirty were English and two only, Hayes and Rutherford, were of Scotch descent. This, on my father's side. On my mother's side, the whole thirty-two were probably all of other peoples beside the Scotch."[15]  Most of his close relatives outside Ohio continued to live there. John Noyes, an uncle by marriage, had been his father's business partner in Vermont and was later elected to Congress.[16] His first cousin, Mary Jane Mead, was the mother of sculptor Larkin Goldsmith Mead and architect William Rutherford Mead.[16] John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of the Oneida Community, was also a first cousin.[17]

Education and early law career[edit]
Hayes attended the common schools in Delaware, Ohio, and enrolled in 1836 at the Methodist Norwalk Seminary in Norwalk, Ohio.[18] He did well at Norwalk, and the next year transferred to the Webb School, a preparatory school in Middletown, Connecticut, where he studied Latin and Ancient Greek.[19] Returning to Ohio, he attended Kenyon College in Gambier in 1838.