Early Life and Education
He was named April when born into slavery on a plantation near Winnsboro, South Carolina; the name indicating the month he was born, a common slave-naming practice at the time. In 1800-1802 he was documented as owned by William Ellison of Fairfield County, the son of Robert Ellison, a planter. Either man could have fathered April.
William Ellison apprenticed April at age 10 to a cotton gin maker, William McCreight of Winnsboro. This would provide him with a valuable trade to make a living as an adult. Completing his apprenticeship after six years, April continued to work at the shop. His earnings went to his master, as he was considered to be "hired out." He continued to learn the variety of complex skills related to cotton gin making and repair.
Read more about this topic: William Ellison
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“Who does not see that I have taken a road along which I shall go, without stopping and without effort, as long as there is ink and paper in the world? I cannot keep a record of my life by my actions; fortune places them too low. I keep it by my thoughts.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Major [William] McKinley visited me. He is on a stumping tour.... I criticized the bloody-shirt course of the canvass. It seems to me to be bad “politics,” and of no use.... It is a stale issue. An increasing number of people are interested in good relations with the South.... Two ways are open to succeed in the South: 1. A division of the white voters. 2. Education of the ignorant. Bloody-shirt utterances prevent division.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)