Bryant was born on November 3, 1794,[1] in a log cabin near Cummington, Massachusetts; this home of his birth is commemorated with a plaque.[2] He was the second son of Peter Bryant (August 12, 1767 – March 20, 1820), a physician and later a state legislator, and Sarah Snell (December 4, 1768 – May 6, 1847). The genealogy of his mother traces back to passengers on the Mayflower, including John Alden (1599–1687), his wife Priscilla Mullins, and her parents William and Alice Mullins. The story of the romance between John and Priscilla is the subject of a famous narrative poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Courtship of Miles Standish.
He was the nephew of Charity Bryant, a Vermont-based seamstress, who is the subject of Rachel Hope Cleves's 2014 book, Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America.[3] Bryant described their relationship: "If I were permitted to draw the veil of private life, I would briefly give you the singular, and to me interesting, story of two maiden ladies who dwell in this valley. I would tell you how, in their youthful days, they took each other as companions for life, and how this union, no less sacred to them than the tie of marriage, has subsisted, in uninterrupted harmony, for more than forty years." Charity and Sylvia Drake are buried together at Weybridge Hill Cemetery in Weybridge, Vermont.
Bryant and his family moved to a new home when he was two years old. Bryant's boyhood home, William Cullen Bryant Homestead, is now a museum. After just one year at Williams College, which he entered with sophomore standing, Bryant hoped to transfer to Yale. But a talk with his father led him to realize that the family's finances could not support it. His father advised Bryant to purse a legal career as his best available choice, and the disappointed poet began to study law in Worthington and Bridgewater in Massachusetts.
In 1815, Bryant was admitted to the bar in 1815 and began practicing law in nearby Plainfield, walking the seven miles from Cummington every day. On one of these walks, in December 1815, he noticed a single bird flying on the horizon; the sight moved him enough to write "To a Waterfowl".[4]
Bryant developed his interest in poetry early in life. Under his father's tutelage, he emulated Alexander Pope and other Neo-Classic British poets. "The Embargo", a critical work on President Thomas Jefferson published in 1808, reflected Bryant's Federalist political views. The first edition quickly sold out, partly because of publicity attached to Bryant's young age at the time of its publication. A second, expanded edition included Bryant's translation of classical verse. During his collegiate studies and his reading for the law, he wrote little poetry, but encounters with the Graveyard Poets and then William Wordsworth regenerated his passion for what Bryant called "the witchery of song."
