Early Life and Law Career
John Tyler was born on March 29, 1790, the first President to be born after the adoption of the Constitution. From birth he was politically tied to his future running mate William Henry Harrison: both were born in Charles City County, Virginia, and descended from aristocratic and politically entrenched families. The Tyler family proudly traced its lineage to colonial Williamsburg in the 17th century. John Tyler, Sr., popularly known as Judge Tyler, was a friend and college roommate of Thomas Jefferson and served in the Virginia House of Delegates alongside William's father Benjamin Harrison V. Judge Tyler served four years as Virginia Speaker of the House before becoming a state court judge. He would later serve as governor and as a judge on the U.S. District Court at Richmond. His wife, Mary Marot (Armistead), was the daughter of a prominent plantation owner, Robert Booth Armistead. She died of a stroke when her son John was seven years old.
The young Tyler was raised with his two brothers and five sisters on Greenway Plantation, a 1,200-acre (5 km2) estate with a six-room mansion his father had built. Various crops including wheat, corn, and tobacco were grown at Greenway by the Tylers' forty slaves. Tyler was an unhealthy child, very thin and prone to chronic diarrhea. Such afflictions would continue to burden him throughout his life. At the age of twelve, he entered the preparatory branch of the elite College of William and Mary, continuing the Tyler family's tradition of attending the college. Tyler graduated from the school's collegiate branch in 1807, at age seventeen. Among the books that informed his economic views was Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. His political views were deeply shaped by Bishop James Madison, the college's president, who served as a second father and mentor to him.
After graduation Tyler went on to study law with his father, who was a state judge at the time. Tyler was admitted to the bar at the age of 19, in violation of bar regulations: the judge who administered the bar exam neglected to inquire about his age. By this time his father had become Governor of Virginia (1808–1811), and the young Tyler started a practice in Richmond. In 1813, he purchased Woodburn and resided there until 1821.
Read more about this topic: John Tyler
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, law and/or career:
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“...all enjoyment is dependent upon the frailty of human life and human desires ... if we were to have all we want and to live forever, all enjoyment would be gone.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)
“Justice begins with the recognition of the necessity of sharing. The oldest law is that which regulates it, and this is still the most important law today and, as such, has remained the basic concern of all movements which have at heart the community of human activities and of human existence in general.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)