Page:A Brief Record of the Lives and Writings of Dr. Rufus Wyman and His Son Dr. Morrill Wyman (IA briefrecordofliv00wyma).djvu/19

Rh son, married first, 1764, the widow of Elijah Brooks, and second, August 6, 1777, Eunice Wyman. Eunice Wyman was his cousin; the daughter of Nathaniel and Mary (Sawyer) Wyman, and granddaughter of Benjamin and Elizabeth (Hancock) Wyman. My grandfather was their first child.

Rufus Wyman received his rudimentary education in the common school of his native town. When he was fourteen years of age his father died, leaving but little property, and it was the family decision that the boy should be prepared for a business life. His inclinations, however, were for a professional career, and his talents disclosed, if cultivated, a fitness for a profession rather than for trade. At this juncture a friend of the family, who had taken a warm interest in him and desired that he should receive a collegiate training, offered his advice and assistance. Both happily being accepted, the plan of an apprenticeship for business life was abandoned, and he was placed under the care of a clergyman in West Cambridge (now Arlington) to prosecute his preparatory studies. After a time under the minister's instruction he went to Westford, Massachusetts, and finished at the academy in that village, in the care of Professor Levi Hedge, later the cultured professor of logic and metaphysics at Harvard. He entered Harvard in 1795. Upon his graduation in 1799 he spent the first year as a school teacher, principally in Worces