Early Life and Education
Elias Boudinot was born in Philadelphia on May 2, 1740. His father, Elias Boudinot III, was a merchant and silversmith; he was a neighbor and friend of Benjamin Franklin. His mother, Mary Catherine Williams, was born in the British West Indies; her father was from Wales. Elias' paternal grandfather, Elie (sometimes called Elias) Boudinot, was the son of Jean Boudinot and Marie Suire of Marans, Aunis, France. They were a Huguenot (French Protestant) family who fled to New York about 1687 to avoid the religious persecutions of King Louis XIV.
Mary Catherine Williams and Elias Boudinot, Sr. were married on August 8, 1729. Over the next twenty years, they had nine children. The first, John, was born in the British West Indies-Antigua. Of the others, only the younger Elias and his siblings Annis, Mary, and Elisha reached adulthood. Annis became one of the first published women poets in the Thirteen Colonies, and her work appeared in leading newspapers and magazines. Elisha Boudinot became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey.
After studying and being tutored at home, Elias Boudinot went to Princeton, New Jersey to read the law as a legal apprentice to Richard Stockton. An attorney, he had married Elias' older sister Annis Boudinot. Richard Stockton was later a signatory of the Declaration of Independence.
Read more about this topic: Elias Boudinot
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“As I went forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping; on this side huddled together, with their gray hairs streaming, in a secluded valley which the sun had not penetrated; on that, hurrying off in Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there’s hope
a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A good education ought to help people to become both more receptive to and more discriminating about the world: seeing, feeling, and understanding more, yet sorting the pertinent from the irrelevant with an ever finer touch, increasingly able to integrate what they see and to make meaning of it in ways that enhance their ability to go on growing.”
—Laurent A. Daloz (20th century)