Early Years and Education
1854 William's father, Harvey LaFollette, was just twenty two years old and newly married. He moved from Indiana to Primrose, Wisconsin to join his older brother Josiah (15 years his senior) in a farming venture. The LaFollettes had lived in the Knob Creek area of Kentucky for a generation before William's grandfather, Jesse LaFollette relocated his entire family to Putnam County, Indiana in order to leave land title and slavery issues behind him. William's brother, Harvey Marion LaFollette and cousin Robert M. La Follette were both born in Primrose in log cabins built by the two LaFollette brothers. After Josiah's premature death from diabetes, William's father returned to Indiana, settling near other LaFollette relatives where he continued farming and built a flour mill. William's birth took place shortly after his family's arrived in Thorntown, Indiana late in 1860. For five years additional siblings arrived and his family grew and prospered. Tragedy struck in 1865 when his father was killed in an industrial accident at the mill. William worked on the farm, clerked in a store, learned the jewelry business, and attended the local normal (public) schools. William and his older brother Harvey both left their Indiana home in 1876. Harvey travelled to Europe to continue his studies in Paris. The sixteen year old William headed west to the Washington Territory and took up farming in Whitman County, an area in the Palouse that had been off limits to settlers since the Indian Wars of the 1850s. Too young to qualify for land under the Homestead Act, he returned to Indiana where he took some business courses at Central Indiana Normal College (now Canterbury College (Indiana).
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Famous quotes containing the words early years, early, years and/or education:
“Parents ... are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don’t fulfil the promise of their early years.”
—Anthony Powell (b. 1905)
“When first we faced, and touching showed
How well we knew the early moves ...”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalms 90:10.
The Book of Common Prayer (1662)
“Tell my son how anxious I am that he may read and learn his Book, that he may become the possessor of those things that a grateful country has bestowed upon his papa—Tell him that his happiness through life depends upon his procuring an education now; and with it, to imbibe proper moral habits that can entitle him to the possession of them.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)