Early Life
Henry Livermore Abbott, the third of eleven children, was born in Lowell, Massachusetts on January 21, 1842, the son of Josiah Gardner Abbott, a successful lawyer and judge. In 1876, Josiah Gardner Abbott was elected to the United States House of Representatives. He was a prominent member of the Democratic Party. Henry's mother, Caroline, was the daughter of U.S. Congressman Edward St. Loe Livermore. Both of Henry's parents were descended from officers who served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.
Henry was a prodigy and in 1856 he enrolled in Harvard University at age 14 with his older brother Edward ("Ned"). The brothers roomed together at a fashionable private boarding house near campus. The young Henry found the rigid atmosphere at Harvard "irksome" and was frequently admonished for "indecorum at prayers," "neglect of mathematics," and "tardiness at recitation." Nonetheless, Henry graduated from Harvard in the middle of the class in 1860. He was reading law in his father's law office when the Civil War broke out.
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“... 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.”
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