Early Life
Thomas B. Mosher was the son of Mary Elizabeth Merrill and Benjamin Mosher, a captain of merchant ships engaged in the China trade during the age of sail. He was born in Biddeford, Maine.
Mosher attended the Quincy Grammar School in Boston, Massachusetts, graduating at age 12, the only formal schooling he would complete. Mosher then spent several years accompanying his father on voyages, including an 1866 trip around Cape Horn. Along the way, he read an edition of Bell's British Theatre which his father had given him, which contributed to a growing love of literature.
Mosher returned to New England, arriving in Maine in 1870. He briefly enrolled at Phillips Exeter Academy but did not stay long. At some point in 1870 or 1871, he secretly married Ellen S. "Ellie" Dresser, and would climb up to her window to see her at night. Eventually they were discovered and at their families' insistence had a public wedding ceremony on July 4, 1871.
At this point, Mosher left his father's home, holding a series of jobs in Portland, St. Louis, New York City and Philadelphia through the 1870s. His first position was working for his wife's uncle Aurin Dresser at the stationery firm of Dresser, McClellan and Company, other positions included working in bookshops and selling printing equipment.
Between 1879 and 1885, his wife left him, his best friend (Leopold Lobsitz, a student at Harvard Medical School) suddenly died, Aurin Dresser died, and his father died. After Dresser's death, Mosher and others tried to maintain the business as McClellan, Mosher and Company, but in 1889, the Portland stationery and law book supply firm went bankrupt. Emerging from the bankruptcy, Mosher opened a wholesale business which manufactured various stationery materials, which finally provided him with a stable income.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Bird Mosher
Famous quotes related to early life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)