John Laurens - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

John Laurens was born in 1754 to Henry Laurens and Eleanor Ball in Charleston, South Carolina; both their families were planters who had grown wealthy through cultivation of rice based on slave labor. Henry Laurens ran one of the largest slave trading houses in the country with his partner Richard Oswald.

John was the eldest of the five children who survived infancy. John and his two brothers were tutored at home, but after the death of their mother, their father took them to England for their education. John completed his studies in Europe, first in London in 1771, then in Geneva, Switzerland in 1772. As a youth, John expressed considerable interest in science and medicine, but he yielded to his father's wish that he study law. In August 1774 he returned to London to do so.

His father returned to South Carolina but refused to let John return until completing his legal studies two years later. In the summer of 1777, after the Revolutionary War had started, Laurens accompanied his father to Philadelphia, where the senior man was to serve in the Continental Congress. Despite the father's objections, the younger Laurens continued on to General George Washington's camp as a volunteer at the age of 23.