Early Life
Thomas Jefferson Hogg was the eldest of John and Prudentia (née Jones) Hogg's six children. He was given his paternal grandfather's first name and his paternal grandmother's last name. John's father was the son of a wealthy businessman and Prudentia's father was a Welsh clergyman. Although John was trained as a barrister he did not practise law regularly. He instead devoted his time to managing his estate and serving as a justice of the peace. The family lived in a Georgian manor known as Norton House, situated 2 miles (3.2 km) outside Stockton-on-Tees.
As a young man Thomas Jefferson read many books, including Paradise Lost, Tristram Shandy and the Life of Johnson. John taught his son Greek and Latin. Every summer the family rented a house in Seaton Carew, where Thomas Jefferson often hunted, fished and went horse riding. He attended a preparatory school in Ferrybridge for four years before moving to Durham School at the age of 12, which his father and grandfather had also attended.
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“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 ...”
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