Orestes Brownson - Early Years and Education

Early Years and Education

Brownson was born on September 16, 1803 to Sylvester Augustus Brownson and Relief Metcalf, who were farmers in Stockbridge, Vermont. Sylvester Brownson died when Orestes was young and Relief decided to give her son up to a nearby adoptive family when he was six years old. The family raised him under the strict confines of Calvinist Congregationalism on a small farm in Royalton, Vermont. He did not receive much schooling but he immensely enjoyed reading books. Among these were volumes by Homer and Locke and the Bible. In 1817, when he was fourteen, Orestes attended an academy briefly in New York. This was the extent of his formal education.

Read more about this topic:  Orestes Brownson

Famous quotes containing the words early, years and/or education:

    “Make-believe is the avenue to much of the young child’s early understanding. He sorts out impressions and tries out ideas that are foundational to his later realistic comprehension. This private world sometimes is a quiet, solitary
    world. More often it is a noisy, busy, crowded place where language grows, and social skills develop, and where perseverance and attention-span expand.”
    —James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)

    “Who lives longer: the man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or the man who lives on roast beef, water and potatoes till ninety-five? One passes his twenty-four months in eternity. All the years of the beef-eater are lived only in time.”
    —Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)

    “... all education must be unsound which does not propose for itself some object; and the highest of all objects must be that of living a life in accordance with God’s Will.”
    —Catherine E. Beecher (1800–1878)