Early Life
Considerable uncertainty still remains about Attucks' origins and early life. He appears to have been born a slave in Framingham, Massachusetts in 1722 possibly on Hartford Street. Framingham had a small population of black inhabitants from at least 1716. Attucks was of mixed African and Native American parentage and was descended from John Auttuck, a Natick who was hanged during King Philip's War.
In 1750 William Brown, a slave-owner in Framingham, advertised for the return of a runaway slave named Crispus. Attucks' status at the time of the massacre as either a free black or a runaway slave has been a matter of debate for historians. What is known is that Attucks became a sailor and he spent much of the remainder of his life at sea often working on whalers which involved long voyages. He may only have been temporarily in Boston in early 1770, having recently returned from a voyage to the Bahamas. He was due to leave shortly afterwards on a ship for North Carolina.
Read more about this topic: Crispus Attucks
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“I got a little secretarial job after college, but I thought of it as a prelude. Education, work, whatever you did before marriage, was only a prelude to your real life, which was marriage.”
—Bonnie Carr (c. early 1930s)
“Poetry isn’t a profession, it’s a way of life. It’s an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.”
—Mary Oliver (b. 1935)