and pluck, of its indomitable will and unfailing courage, of its
shrewdness, audacity and unerring instinct for success.

Like so many of his famous compatriots, Phineas Taylor Barnum
came of good old New England stock. His ancestors were among the
builders of the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. His
father's father, Ephraim Barnum, was a captain in the War of the
Revolution, and was distinguished for his valor and for his
fervent patriotism. His mother's father, Phineas Taylor, was
locally noted as a wag and practical joker. His father, Philo
Barnum, was in turn a tailor, a farmer, a storekeeper, and a
country tavernkeeper, and was not particularly prosperous in any
of these callings.

Philo Barnum and his wife, Irena Taylor, lived at Bethel,
Connecticut, and there, on July 5, 1810, their first child was
born. He was named Phineas Taylor Barnum, after his maternal
grandfather; and the latter, in return for the compliment,
bestowed upon his first grandchild at his christening the
title-deeds of a "landed estate," five acres in extent, known as
Ivy Island, and situated in that part of, Bethel known as the
"Plum Trees." Of this, more anon.

In his early years the boy led the life of the average New
England farmer's son of that period. He drove the cows to and
from the pasture, shelled corn, weeded the garden, and "did up
chores." As he grew older he rode the horse in plowing corn,
raked hay, wielded the shovel and the hoe, and chopped wood. At
six years old he began to go to school--the typical district
school. "The first date," he once said, "I remember inscribing