Early Life and Education
Nathaniel Briggs Borden was born to Simeon Borden and Amey (Briggs) Borden in the part of Freetown, Massachusetts which became Fall River in 1803. His father died in 1811. His mother Amey, was one of the original incorporators of the Troy Cotton & Woolen Manufactory, the second cotton mill to be established Fall River, in 1813, which was built on her property. Amey Borden died in 1817, leaving five children, including sixteen-year-old Nathaniel.
Much of Borden's youth was spent in Tiverton, Rhode Island. He attended the district school and Plainfield (Connecticut) Academy, but left when his mother died. Borden acquired an interest in government at a young age. In 1821, when he was just twenty years old, Borden and several associates organized the Pocasset Manufacturing Company, in Fall River, Massachusetts. He served as the company's first clerk and treasurer.
Borden was married four times. His first marriage was to Sarah Gray on March 16, 1820. The couple had five children before Sarah died on May 22, 1840. Their eldest son, Simeon served as clerk of the courts of Bristol County, Massachusetts for thirty-two years.
Borden's second marriage was to Sarah's sister Louisa Gray on December 10, 1840. She died on June 4, 1842.
Borden's third marriage was to Sarah Gould Buffum on February 12, 1843. She was the daughter of Arnold Buffum, and sister of Elizabeth Buffum Chace. She died on September 10, 1854 from Asiatic cholera, one day after their daughter died from the same disease. This marriage also produced a son, Nathaniel Briggs, born in 1844. Nathaniel Briggs Borden, Jr. would later follow his father's footsteps with a career business and banking, including the Valley Falls Company, run by his uncle Samuel B. Chace, and later the Barnard Mills in Fall River, which he helped organize.
Borden's last marriage was to Lydia A. Slade on March 14, 1855.
Read more about this topic: Nathaniel B. Borden
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or education:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Pray be always in motion. Early in the morning go and see things; and the rest of the day go and see people. If you stay but a week at a place, and that an insignificant one, see, however, all that is to be seen there; know as many people, and get into as many houses as ever you can.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“It may be that the ignorant man, alone,
Has any chance to mate his life with life
That is the sensual, pearly spouse, the life
That is fluent in even the wintriest bronze.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“I envy neither the heart nor the head of any legislator who has been born to an inheritance of privileges, who has behind him ages of education, dominion, civilization, and Christianity, if he stands opposed to the passage of a national education bill, whose purpose is to secure education to the children of those who were born under the shadow of institutions which made it a crime to read.”
—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)