Early Life and Education
James Lanman was the eldest of the seven children of Peter Lanman Jr., of Norwich, Connecticut and Sarah Coit Lanman. The first of many generations of Lanmans who attended what is now known as Yale University, James Lanman pursued classical studies and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale College in 1788. Lanman studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1791, beginning his practice in his hometown of Norwich "where he acquired great local distinction for his eloquence and general ability". We get an interesting glimpse of James Lanman as a young man of 20 through the diary of John Quincy Adams, who was two years his senior and rode with him on a stage from Boston to Providence on September 8, 1789: "I had two companions; one a Mr. Wright from North Carolina, and the other a young man from Connecticut by the name of Lanman. We were tolerably sociable. Lanman sung a number of songs of his own accord, and sung very well. But, upon being requested by Mr. Wright to continue, he altogether denied that he could sing at all." When his father, shipping magnate Peter Lanman, died in 1804, James inherited and moved into his childhood home, the now historic "Peter Lanman House" on Main Street, for the rest of his life. A nearby tavern (now the Norwich Savings Society) at "Peter Lanman's Corner", at Main and Broadway in Norwich, is of interest because George Washington stayed there in 1775.
James Lanman married Marian Chandler on May 18, 1794 and had four sons and eight daughters. Widowed in 1817, Lanman married his second wife, Mary Judith (Gall) Benjamin, on October 26, 1826. He had no children by his second marriage.
Read more about this topic: James Lanman
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“He had long before indulged most unfavourable sentiments of our fellow-subjects in America. For, as early as 1769,... he had said of them, “Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging.””
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Alvina felt herself swept ... into a dusky region where men had dark faces and translucent yellow eyes, where all speech was foreign, and life was not her life. It was as if she had fallen from her own world on to another, darker star, where meanings were all changed.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take this examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one would be a penny the stupider.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)