Struggles and Triumphs

I

Early Life

My Birth—First Property—Farmer-Boy Life—Going to School—Early Acquisitiveness—A Holiday Peddler—First Visit to New York—Learning to “Swap”—Miseries from Molasses Candy—“Ivy Island”—Entering Upon My Estate—Clerkship in a Country Store—Trading Morals—The Bethel Meetinghouse—Stove Question—Sunday School and Bible Class—My Composition—The One Thing Needful.

I was born in the town of Bethel, in the State of Connecticut, July 5, 1810. My name, Phineas Taylor, is derived from my maternal grandfather, who was a great wag in his way, and who, as I was his first grandchild, gravely handed over to my mother at my christening a gift-deed, in my behalf, of five acres of land situated in that part of the parish of Bethel known as the “Plum Trees.” I was thus a real estate owner almost at my very birth; and of my property, “Ivy Island,” something shall be said anon.

My father, Philo Barnum, was the son of Ephraim Barnum, of Bethel, who was a captain in the revolutionary war. My father was a tailor, a farmer, and sometimes a tavern-keeper, and my advantages and disadvantages were such as fall to the general run of farmers’ boys. I drove cows to and from the pasture, shelled corn, weeded the garden; as I grew larger, I rode horse for ploughing, turned and raked hay; in due time I handled the shovel and the hoe, and when I could do so I went to school.

I was six years old when I began to go to school, and the first date I remember inscribing upon my writing-book was 1818. The ferule, in those days, was the assistant schoolmaster; but in spite of it, I was a willing, and, I think, a pretty apt scholar; at least, I was so considered by my teachers and schoolmates, and as the years went on there were never more than two or three in the school who were deemed my superiors. In arithmetic I was unusually ready and accurate, and I remember, at the age of twelve years, being called out of bed one night by my teacher who had wagered with a neighbor that I could calculate the correct number of feet in a load of wood in five minutes. The dimensions given, I figured out the result in less than two minutes, to the great delight of my teacher and to the equal astonishment of his neighbor.