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, early and/or life:
“The condition that gives birth to a rule is not the same as the condition to which the rule gives birth.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“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)
“There was something so free and self-contained about him, something in the young fellow’s movements, that made that officer aware of him. And this irritated the Prussian. He did not choose to be touched into life by his servant.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)