Elijah Cornell (1771-1862), the father of Ezra Cornell, came from a family of Massachusetts Puritan farmers who at some point had joined the Society of Friends. At 19, he was apprenticed to a potter, a trade he pursued for most of his life. In 1805, at age 34, he married 17-year-old Eunice Barnard (1788-1857), whose family were seamen and farmers. The couple's first child, Ezra, was born Jan. 11, 1807, in Westchester Landing, N.Y. He would be the eldest of six brothers and five sisters.

After losing money in a ship venture in 1807, Elijah purchased 150 acres for $375 in De Ruyter, Madison County (about 25 miles northeast of Cortland), where Quakers had formed a community. The Cornells, with infant Ezra, made the three-week journey overland by team and wagon. In 1810, they returned to Westchester, where Elijah found employment as foreman in a pottery in Westchester Village; the following year he set up his own earthenware factory in Tarrytown.

The War of 1812 halted imports of English pottery, increasing the demand for local cheap, brown earthenware. Elijah had also worked at the Queens Ware Pottery in West Farms, where he learned to produce a high-grade white ware. But at war's end, the market was flooded with cheaper English ware.

Once again Elijah moved with his family, this time to seek better markets in New Jersey. And as he had done from the age of 6, Ezra helped in his father's business, running errands and, later, serving as a traveling salesman.

Adapted by Susan S. Lang from Invention and Enterprise: Ezra Cornell, a Nineteenth-Century Life.