Early Years
Gladden was born in 1836 in Pottsgrove, Pennsylvania to devout parents as Solomon Washington Gladden. Gladden's father died when he was six and he spent much of his childhood living with his uncle on a farm in Owego, New York. At the time, western New York State was known as the Burned-Over District because it had been the center of a number of religious revivals. He joined the temperance movement as a boy.
Gladden became a journalist at the age of 16 and changed his name around the same time. However, he was keen to become a clergyman studying at the Owego Free Academy and graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. While at Williams, Gladden wrote its alma mater song, The Mountains.
Read more about this topic: Washington Gladden
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early and/or years:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome around A.D. 100] thought that the earliest years of the child’s life were crucial. Education should start earlier than age seven, within the family. It should not be so hard as to give the child an aversion to learning. Rather, these early lessons would take the form of play—that embryonic notion of kindergarten.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“Every few years something new breaks into the circle of my thoughts.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)