Early Life
James Bowdoin II was born in Boston to Hannah Portage Bowdoin and James Bowdoin, a wealthy Boston merchant. His grandfather, Pierre Baudouin, was a Huguenot refugee from France. Pierre took his family first to Ireland, then to eastern Massachusetts (present-day Maine), before finally settling in Boston in 1690. James Bowdoin I had a modest inheritance from his parents, but greatly expanded his father's merchant business and land holdings to became one of the wealthiest men in the province. Young James attended the South Grammar School (now Boston Latin School), then graduated from Harvard College in 1745. When his father died in 1747, he inherited a considerable fortune. He married Elizabeth Erving, daughter of his Harvard roommate, in 1748. They had two children.
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