Candace Wheeler - Early Life

Early Life

Candace Wheeler was born Candace Thurber on March 24, 1827 in Delhi, New York west of the Catskill Mountains (which would serve as the inspiration for her development of Onteora). Her parents were Abner and Lucy Thurber. Candace was the third born of eight siblings: Lydia Ann Thurber(1824-?), Charles Stewart Thurber (1826–1888), Horace Thurber (1828–1899), Lucy Thurber (1834–1893), Millicent Thurber (1837–1838), Abner Dunham Thurber (1839–1899), and Francis Beattie Thurber (1842–1907).

Wheeler led a happy a childhood, though she expressed annoyance at how their father raised them "a hundred years behind the time" (6, Peck and Irish). Her father was strictly Presbyterian but also a strict abolitionist. He ensured that the family never used any product made by slaves. So concerned was this endeavor of Abner, that the family used homemade maple sugar instead of cane sugar and linen woven from flax they grew on their farm instead of southern cotton.

Candace attended an infant school and later, when she was old enough, the Delaware Academy in Delhi And despite her complaints about her father was often actively encouraged by him to write poetry, to paint, and to generally be creative and imaginative.