John Tyler was born on March 29, 1790, at Greenway plantation in Charles City County, Virginia, the son of John Tyler Sr. and Mary Marot Armistead Tyler. His father was a planter, judge, governor, and friend of Thomas Jefferson; his mother came from another established Virginia family. Tyler grew up among seven siblings in the privileged world of the Tidewater gentry. Greenway’s economy and the family’s comfort depended upon enslaved labor. Mary Tyler died when John was about seven, leaving his father as the dominant influence on his upbringing. The elder Tyler valued republican politics, states’ rights, classical education, and public service. John was physically slight and frequently ill, but he proved intellectually capable. He received early instruction from private tutors in grammar, classics, mathematics, and history. At twelve Tyler entered the preparatory division of the College of William and Mary and advanced into the collegiate course. Williamsburg placed him near courts, political traditions, and the memory of Virginia’s revolutionary leaders. He studied Latin, Greek, rhetoric, moral philosophy, and law-related subjects, graduating in 1807 at seventeen. Tyler then read law under his father and other established attorneys, including Edmund Randolph. Apprenticeship introduced him to common law, property, constitutional argument, and courtroom procedure. He gained admission to the bar in 1809, before reaching the usual legal age, because the examining judge apparently did not realize how young he was. Before becoming a congressman, governor, vice president, and president, Tyler had been shaped by maternal loss, a politically powerful father, plantation privilege, rigorous classical schooling, precocious legal study, and close exposure to Virginia’s ideology of limited federal power. These advantages accelerated his career, while the slaveholding environment of his childhood defined both his material interests and many of his later political commitments.