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Added to "Patrick Henry"
Growing up at Mount Brilliant, young Patrick was fairly outgoing, learning how to dance and play the fiddle at an early age; and he was said to have taken part in many casual conversations and arguments among his peers over matters of politics and business. At the same time, he received a vigorous, if informal, education in Latin and the classics from his father. Two other figures of importance in Henry's youth were his uncle, the Reverend Patrick Henry, Sr., and his mother's favorite minister, Reverend Samuel Davies, a notable Presbyterian leader who would later become the president of Princeton University in [[New Jersey]]. From them he received not only moral tutelage but lessons in rhetoric and oratory, which would be a major influence on his political career.
Growing up at Mount Brilliant, young Patrick was fairly outgoing, learning how to dance and play the fiddle at an early age; and he was said to have taken part in many casual conversations and arguments among his peers over matters of politics and business. At the same time, he received a vigorous, if informal, education in Latin and the classics from his father. Two other figures of importance in Henry's youth were his uncle, the Reverend Patrick Henry, Sr., and his mother's favorite minister, Reverend Samuel Davies, a notable Presbyterian leader who would later become the president of Princeton University in [[New Jersey]]. From them he received not only moral tutelage but lessons in rhetoric and oratory, which would be a major influence on his political career.
In 1751, Henry's father apprenticed the 15-year-old as a clerk in the store of a local Scottish merchant. This lasted about a year before Patrick became a junior partner in another store set up by his older brother William, though it soon failed. In 1754, Patrick Henry married Sarah Shelton, whose dowry included six slaves and a farm of about 300 acres. The land on the estate proved to be of poor quality, however, and promises of a land inheritance to the west from his father were not immediately realized. To make matters worse, the young couple's home was destroyed by fire in 1757. In debt and with a family to support (the union had already produced multiple children), Henry for a time operated a tavern for his father-in-law, Captain John Shelton, but eventually decided to take up the law as a profession. As was often the case then, his studies were less-than-formal, consisting of only a few months' review of the colony's laws and of the legal compendiums of Sir Edward Coke and other notable lawyers of the past; nonetheless, he passed the bar exam at Williamsburg, and presented his law license at Goochland Court House on April 15, 1760.
[[Image:Bland jones.jpg|200px|thumb|A depiction Henry speaking in the Virginia House of Burgesses.]]
[[Image:Bland jones.jpg|200px|thumb|A depiction Henry speaking in the Virginia House of Burgesses.]]