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 early life, birth, early and/or life:

    ... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.
    Hortense Odlum (1892–?)

    I wouldn’t put it past God to arrange a virgin birth if He wanted, but I very much doubt if He would.
    David Jenkins (b. 1925)

    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)

    Such was life in the Golden Gate:
    Gold dusted all we drank and ate,
    And I was one of the children told,
    “We all must eat our peck of gold.”
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)