Early Life
Harrison was born in New York City to Burton Harrison, a lawyer and private secretary to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and Constance Cary Harrison, novelist and social arbiter. Through his mother, Harrison was great-grandson of Virginia-planter, Thomas Fairfax, 9th Lord Fairfax of Cameron. Through Fairfax in birth and marriage, Harrison was also relative to United States founding fathers: Gouverneur Morris (his great-great-uncle), Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, the Randolphs, the Ishams, and the Carters.
Harrison graduated from Yale University in 1895, where he was a member of the secret society Skull and Bones, and from the New York Law School in 1897. From 1897 to 1899, Harrison was an instructor in the Evening Division at New York Law School. He later left to serve in United States Army during the Spanish-American War, first as captain and later as assistant adjutant general.
Read more about this topic: Francis Burton Harrison
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