Patrick Henry - Early Years

Early Years

Henry was born in Studley, Hanover County, Virginia on May 29, 1736. His father was John Henry, an immigrant from Aberdeenshire, Scotland, who had attended King's College, Aberdeen before emigrating to the Colony of Virginia in the 1720s. Settling in Hanover County, in about 1732 John Henry married Sarah Winston Syme, a wealthy widow from a prominent Hanover County family of English ancestry. Patrick Henry was once thought to have been of humble origins, but he was born into the middle ranks of the Virginia landed gentry.

Henry attended local schools for a few years, and then was tutored by his father. He tried to start in business but was not successful.

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