Early Life and Career
Roeliff (often mistakenly known as 'Ruloff') was born in Owasco, Cayuga County, New York. At the age of sixteen, he became a teacher in his native town, while at eighteen he was in charge of a school near Hendersonville, Tennessee. The following year he was the tutor in the family of Andrew Jackson Jr. before moving to Mansfield, Ohio, to study law with his relative Jacob Brinkerhoff. He was admitted to the bar in 1852, and remained in active practice from that time until after the outbreak of hostilities during the American Civil War. He also served as editor the Mansfield Herald newspaper. Brinkerhoff was married on February 3, 1852, to Mary Lake Bentley, of Mansfield, a granddaughter of General Robert Bentley, a general in the Ohio militia in the War of 1812, later a lawyer, judge and state senator. They had two sons and two daughters.
A firm believer in prison and asylum reform, he was at first a free-soil Democrat, then a Republican, and then, following the unsuccessful Liberal Republican Party movement of 1872, a Democrat once more; he was described as a "Jeffersonian democrat, a believer in free trade, hard money, home rule, and the non-interference principles of government generally."
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