William Paterson was born on December 24, 1745, in County Antrim, Ireland, to Richard Paterson and Mary Paterson. His family was of Scots-Irish Presbyterian background. When William was still a child, the Patersons emigrated to British North America, joining the large movement of Ulster families seeking land and opportunity. They eventually settled in Princeton, New Jersey, where his father became a merchant. Immigration shaped Paterson’s childhood. He grew up between inherited memories of Ireland and the commercial, religious, and educational life of the middle colonies. His family valued schooling and placed him at the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University. He graduated in 1763 and remained for a master’s degree. The college’s Presbyterian environment emphasized classical languages, rhetoric, logic, moral philosophy, and public responsibility. Paterson then studied law under Richard Stockton, one of New Jersey’s leading attorneys and a future signer of the Declaration of Independence. Reading law involved close study of English authorities, copying pleadings, observing courts, and learning the property and debt disputes common in colonial practice. He was admitted to the bar in 1768 and began building a career in New Bromley and later in other New Jersey communities. In 1770 he married Cornelia Bell, with whom he had three children before her early death. Marriage and legal practice rooted him firmly in the province. He also joined literary and political circles that included former Princeton classmates and other young professionals. Before he became a Revolutionary official, constitutional framer, governor, or Supreme Court justice, Paterson had experienced migration, cultural adaptation, rigorous Presbyterian education, and professional apprenticeship. He was not born into New Jersey’s old landed elite; his advancement depended on family sacrifice, academic achievement, legal competence, and cultivated relationships. These formative experiences help explain both his attachment to New Jersey and his later determination that smaller states receive meaningful protection within the federal union.