11 Poor Boys

1. John Adams, second President of the United States, was the son of a grocer of very moderate means. The only start he had was a good education.

2. Andrew Jackson was born in a log hut in North Carolina, and was reared in the pine woods for which the state is famous.

3. James K. Polk spent the earlier years of his life helping to dig out a living out of a new farm in North Carolina. He was afterward a clerk in a country store.

4. Millard Fillmore was the son of a New York farmer, and his home was a humble one. He learned the business of a clothier.

5. James Buchanan was born in a small town in the Allegheny Mountains. His father cut the logs and built the house in what was then a wilderness.

6. Abraham Lincoln was the son of a wretchedly poor farmer in Kentucky, and lived in a log cabin until he was twenty-one years old.

7. Andrew Johnson was apprenticed to a tailor at the age of ten years by his widowed mother. He was never able to attend school, and picked up all the education he ever had.

8. Ulysses S. Grant lived the life of a village boy, in a plain house on the banks of the Ohio River until he was seventeen years of age.

9. James A. Garfield was born in a log cabin. He worked on the farm until he was strong enough to use carpenter's tools, when he learned the trade. He afterwards worked on a canal.

10. Grover Cleveland's father was a Presbyterian minister with a small salary and a large family. The boys had to earn their living.

11. William McKinley's early home was plain and comfortable, and his father was able to keep him at school.
—Rocky Mountain Advocate