Early Life
Czolgosz was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1873, one of eight children (six sons and two daughters) of Mary (née Nowak) and Paul Czolgosz, Polish Catholic immigrants from Prussia.
According to a different source, Czolgosz's ancestors were immigrants from what is now Belarus. His father might have immigrated to the US in the 1860s from Astravets near Hrodna. At immigration, he stated his ethnicity as Hungarian and changed his surname from Zholhus (Жолгусь, Żołguś) to Czolgosz.
He was baptized in St. Albertus Catholic Church. His family moved to Detroit when he was five years old.
He left his family farm in Warrensville, Ohio, at the age of ten to work at the American Steel and Wire Company with two of his brothers. After the workers of his factory went on strike, he and his brothers were fired. Czolgosz then returned to the family farm in Warrensville. At the age of sixteen, he was sent to work in a glass factory in Natrona, Pennsylvania for two years before moving back home.
Read more about this topic: Leon Czolgosz
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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