Early Life and Education
Donnelly was the son of an Irish immigrant, Philip Carrol Donnelly, who had settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On June 29, 1826, Philip married Catherine Gavin, a 2nd generation American of Irish ancestry.
After starting as a peddler, Philip studied medicine at the Philadelphia College of Medicine. He later contracted typhus from a patient and died at age 31, leaving his wife with five children.
Catherine provided for her children by operating a pawn shop. Ignatius, her youngest son, was admitted to the prestigious Central High School, the second oldest public high school in the United States. There he studied under the presidency of John S. Hart, excelling primarily in literature.
Donnelly then decided to become a lawyer, and became a clerk for Benjamin Brewster, later Attorney-General of the United States. He was admitted to the bar in 1852. In 1855, he married Katherine McCaffrey, with whom he had three children. In 1855, he resigned his clerkship, entered politics and participated in communal home building schemes.
Becoming the object of rumors of financial scandal, he moved to the Minnesota Territory in 1857, where he settled in Dakota County. Together with several partners, Donnelly initiated a utopian community called Nininger City. However, the Panic of 1857 doomed the attempt at a cooperative farm and community and left Donnelly deeply in debt.
Read more about this topic: Ignatius L. Donnelly
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“We have good reason to believe that memories of early childhood do not persist in consciousness because of the absence or fragmentary character of language covering this period. Words serve as fixatives for mental images. . . . Even at the end of the second year of life when word tags exist for a number of objects in the child’s life, these words are discrete and do not yet bind together the parts of an experience or organize them in a way that can produce a coherent memory.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influence which flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)