Ezra Cornell - Birth and Early Life

Birth and Early Life

He was born in Westchester County, New York, the son of Eunice (Barnard), and a potter, Elijah Cornell, and was raised near DeRuyter, New York. He was a cousin of Paul Cornell, the founder of Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. To the north Cornell is also a distant relative of William Cornell, who was an early settler of Scarborough, Ontario and named used for the planned community of Cornell, Ontario. Having traveled extensively as a carpenter in New York State, Ezra, upon first setting eyes on Cayuga Lake and Ithaca, decided Ithaca would be his future home.

The emigrant Thomas Cornell was probably Puritan at first then a follower of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson drifting into Quakerism which seems to have been the religion of his descendants. Written by John Cornell at the Cornell Homestead in So. Portsmouth, Rhode Island and dated August 7, 1901. Portsmouth, RI is noteworthy in American history for the 1638 Portsmouth Compact declaring for a separation of church and state rivaling the Flushing Remonstrance of 1657 declaring for religious tolerance in New Amsterdam, Quakers in particular.

Read more about this topic:  Ezra Cornell

Famous quotes containing the words birth and, birth, early and/or life:

    Not yet the thirtieth year, the thirtieth
    Station where time reverses his light heels
    To run both ways, and makes of forward back;
    Whose long co-ordinates are birth and death....
    Allen Tate (1899–1979)

    I am not fooling myself with dreams of immortality, know how relative all literature is, don’t have any faith in mankind, derive enjoyment from too few things. Sometimes these crises give birth to something worth while, sometimes they simply plunge one deeper into depression, but, of course, it is all part of the same thing.
    Stefan Zweig (18811942)

    We have been told over and over about the importance of bonding to our children. Rarely do we hear about the skill of letting go, or, as one parent said, “that we raise our children to leave us.” Early childhood, as our kids gain skills and eagerly want some distance from us, is a time to build a kind of adult-child balance which permits both of us room.
    Joan Sheingold Ditzion (20th century)

    All my life I’ve always spoiled the things that meant the most to me.
    Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)