Early Life and Education
Langston was born free in 1829 in Louisa County, Virginia, the youngest of a daughter and three sons of Lucy Jane Langston, a freedwoman of mixed African and Native American descent, and Ralph Quarles, an English plantation owner, Quarles freed Lucy, a slave, and their daughter Maria in 1806, in the course of what was a relationship of more than 25 years. Their three sons were born free. His older brothers were Gideon and Charles Henry.
Lucy had three other children with another partner before she moved into the Great House and deepened her relationship with Quarles. Their three sons were born after her move. Of the older half-siblings, William Langston was most involved with Quarles' sons. He relocated with them to Chillicothe, Ohio (see below.)
Before his death, Ralph Quarles arranged for his Quaker friend William Gooch to be made guardian of his children. As requested by Quarles, after the parents both died in 1833 when John Langston was four, Gooch moved with the boys and their half-brother William Langston to Chillicothe, Ohio, in a free state. Quarles had reserved funds for their education. In 1835 the older brothers Gideon and Charles started at the preparatory school at Oberlin College, where they were the first African-American students to be admitted. Gideon looked much like his father and took his surname at the age of 21, and thereafter was known as Gideon Quarles.
The youngest Langston followed them, enrolling in the preparatory program at Oberlin College at the age of fourteen. John Langston earned a bachelor's degree in 1849 and a master's degree in theology in 1852 from Oberlin. Denied admission to law schools in New York and Ohio because of his race, Langston studied law (or "read law", as was a practice then) under attorney and Republican US congressman Philemon Bliss and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1854.
Read more about this topic: John Mercer Langston
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