Early Life and Education
She was born Victoria California Claflin, the seventh of ten children (six of whom survived to maturity), in the rural frontier town of Homer, Licking County, Ohio. Her mother Roxanna "Roxy" Hummel Claflin was illiterate and was illegitimate. She had become a follower of the Austrian mystic Franz Mesmer and the new spiritualist movement. Her father Reuben "Old Buck" Buckman Claflin was a con man and snake oil salesman. He came from an impoverished branch of the Massachusetts-based Scots-American Claflin family, semi-distant cousins to Governor William Claflin. Victoria became close to her sister Tennessee Celeste Claflin (called Tennie), seven years her junior and the last child born to the family. As adults they collaborated.
By age 11, she had only three years of formal education, but her teachers found her to be extremely intelligent. She was forced to leave school and Homer with her family after her father, after having "insured it heavily", burned the family's rotting gristmill. When he tried to get compensated by insurance, his arson and fraud were discovered; and he was run off by a group of town vigilantes. The town held a "benefit" to raise funds to pay for the rest of his family's departure for Ohio.
Read more about this topic: Victoria Woodhull
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