...han any one of them. He had indeed, like every boy born in New England, some drop of academic blood within his traditions, but he was born in the house of his grandfather, a poor farmer in Wolcott, Connecticut , on November 29, 1799. He went to the most primitive of wayside schools, and was placed at fourteen as apprentice in a clock factory; was for a few years a traveling peddler, selling almanacs and t...