II.

Early Life

Franklin Pierce was born on November 23, 1804. His family was of pioneer stock, his ancestors having settled at Charlestown, Massachusetts, in the 1630s during the great Puritan migration from England. He was the second son of Anna Kendrick Pierce and Benjamin Pierce, who was a militia general, a veteran of the American Revolution (1775-1783), and, at the time of Pierce's birth, a passionate Jeffersonian Democrat. Benjamin Pierce exerted great influence on his son, imbuing him with his own devotion to public service and sense of patriotism.

Pierce was educated at the local Hillsborough school until the age of 12 and prepared for college at academies in Hancock and Francestown, New Hampshire. Franklin's older brother was at Dartmouth College, but General Pierce disagreed with the political philosophy at Dartmouth and sent Franklin to the newer Bowdoin College at Brunswick, Maine. When he entered Bowdoin, Pierce was a sociable and friendly 15-year-old. He quickly made friends, among them future American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was to be his friend for life.

Pierce graduated from Bowdoin in 1824 and the following year entered the law office of Levi Woodbury in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In 1826 he transferred to a law school in Northampton, Massachusetts, and completed his studies with Judge Edmund Parker at Amherst, New Hampshire. Pierce proved to have a keen aptitude for the law.