Early Life and Career
Burnet was born to Dr. William Burnet and his second wife, Gertrude Gouverneur Rutgers, widow of Anthony Rutgers (a brother of Henry Rutgers who founded Rutgers University). His father had served in the Continental Congress. Both of his parents died when Burnet was a child.
In 1805, Burnet became a clerk for a New York counting house, Robinson and Hartshorne. When the firm suffered financial difficulty, Burnet gave his entire personal inheritance, $1,200, to try to save the company. The firm went bankrupt, and Burnet lost all of the money.
Burnet volunteered to serve the unsuccessful revolt led by Francisco de Miranda for the independence of Venezuela from Spain. He fought in Chile in 1806 and in Venezuela in 1808. After Miranda broke with Simon Bolivar, Burnet returned to the United States. On his return Burnet moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, to study law. He lived with his two older brothers, Jacob, who later became a U.S. Senator, and Isaac, who later served as mayor of Cincinnati.
Read more about this topic: David G. Burnet
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or career:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Two sleepy people by dawn’s early light, and two much in love to say goodnight.”
—Frank Loesser (1910–1969)
“We have created an industrial order geared to automatism, where feeble-mindedness, native or acquired, is necessary for docile productivity in the factory; and where a pervasive neurosis is the final gift of the meaningless life that issues forth at the other end.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)