Early Years and Education
1854 William's father, Harvey LaFollette, was just twenty two years old and newly married. He moved from Indiana to Primrose, Wisconsin to join his older brother Josiah (15 years his senior) in a farming venture. The LaFollettes had lived in the Knob Creek area of Kentucky for a generation before William's grandfather, Jesse LaFollette relocated his entire family to Putnam County, Indiana in order to leave land title and slavery issues behind him. William's brother, Harvey Marion LaFollette and cousin Robert M. La Follette were both born in Primrose in log cabins built by the two LaFollette brothers. After Josiah's premature death from diabetes, William's father returned to Indiana, settling near other LaFollette relatives where he continued farming and built a flour mill. William's birth took place shortly after his family's arrived in Thorntown, Indiana late in 1860. For five years additional siblings arrived and his family grew and prospered. Tragedy struck in 1865 when his father was killed in an industrial accident at the mill. William worked on the farm, clerked in a store, learned the jewelry business, and attended the local normal (public) schools. William and his older brother Harvey both left their Indiana home in 1876. Harvey travelled to Europe to continue his studies in Paris. The sixteen year old William headed west to the Washington Territory and took up farming in Whitman County, an area in the Palouse that had been off limits to settlers since the Indian Wars of the 1850s. Too young to qualify for land under the Homestead Act, he returned to Indiana where he took some business courses at Central Indiana Normal College (now Canterbury College (Indiana).
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