Struggles and Triumphs

I

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.