Walt Whitman's Early Childhood

The life of Walt Whitman is a quite normal but interesting one. Whitman was born on May 31, 1819 in West Hills, Long Island, New York, the second of eight children in the Whitman household. (Editors) He was raised by two loving parents, Louisa Van Velsor and Walter Whitman, that would do almost anything for their eight children. Whitman grew up in a modest household which also had modest means. (Editors) The Whitman family owned large parcels of property and farmland and where living comfortably. However, by the time that Walt was born, much of the property had been sold off and there was only a small amount of property left. (Editors) All that remained of the Whitman’s land fortune, was a 60-acre parcel in West Hills. (Reynolds)
Many people don’t really know much about Walt Whitman’s early childhood, as neither did I. I did not know that he was very fond of his father, but had an intense amount of love for his mother. (Reynolds) In one of his poems, Walt Whitman idolizes his mother by
With just 2 children, and a spouse, Walter Whitman (Walt Whitman’s father) took the growing family to Brooklyn, New York to start a new life. (Reynolds) Back in 1822, Brooklyn was just a small town with a very small population compared to today’s. However, Walter Whitman had a hard time finding a job at the time, even though Brooklyn was going through a building boom which by 1855 would make it the fourth largest city in America. (Reynolds) The reasons for his struggles came due to the fact that he had very few business talents, and there were no jobs for carpenters or real estate agents. (Reynolds) During this period, Walt Whitman moved into more than seven different homes in his first 10 years of being In Brooklyn. In one of his poems, Whitman says, “We occupied them, one after the other, but they were mortgaged, and we lost them”.