Early Life
Considerable uncertainty still remains about Attucks' origins and early life. He appears to have been born a slave in Framingham, Massachusetts in 1722 possibly on Hartford Street. Framingham had a small population of black inhabitants from at least 1716. Attucks was of mixed African and Native American parentage and was descended from John Auttuck, a Natick who was hanged during King Philip's War.
In 1750 William Brown, a slave-owner in Framingham, advertised for the return of a runaway slave named Crispus. Attucks' status at the time of the massacre as either a free black or a runaway slave has been a matter of debate for historians. What is known is that Attucks became a sailor and he spent much of the remainder of his life at sea often working on whalers which involved long voyages. He may only have been temporarily in Boston in early 1770, having recently returned from a voyage to the Bahamas. He was due to leave shortly afterwards on a ship for North Carolina.
Read more about this topic: Crispus Attucks
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“I do believe that the outward and the inward life correspond; that if any should succeed to live a higher life, others would not know of it; that difference and distance are one. To set about living a true life is to go on a journey to a distant country, gradually to find ourselves surrounded by new scenes and men; and as long as the old are around me, I know that I am not in any true sense living a new or a better life.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)