Early Life
Increase Sumner was born on 27 November 1746 in Roxbury, Province of Massachusetts Bay, one of eight children of Increase Sumner and Sarah Sharp. The elder Increase Sumner was a successful farmer descended from early settlers of Dorchester; he held a number of public offices including coroner for Suffolk County, and selectman of Roxbury.
In 1752 Sumner enrolled in the grammar school in Roxbury, now Roxbury Latin School, where the headmaster was William Cushing, future justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Sumner excelled at school, and over the resistance of his father (who envisioned his son's future to be in agriculture) was enrolled at Harvard College in 1763. He graduated in 1767.
Read more about this topic: Increase Sumner
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“I taught school in the early days of my manhood and I think I know something about mothers. There is a thread of aspiration that runs strong in them. It is the fiber that has formed the most unselfish creatures who inhabit this earth. They want three things only; for their children to be fed, to be healthy, and to make the most of themselves.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“You haf slafed your life away in de bosses’ mills and your fadhers before you and your kids after you yet. Vat is a man to do with seventeen-fifty a week? His wife must work nights to make another ten, must vork nights and cook and wash in day an’ vatfor? So that the bosses can get rich an’ the stockholders and bondholders. It is too much... ve stood it before because ve vere not organized. Now we have union... We must all stand together for union.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)