Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/264

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JULIUS C. BURROWS

JULIUS C. BURROWS, statesman, lawyer, orator and parliamentarian, has represented the state of Michigan in the senate of the United States since January, 1895, and prior to that date sat for eight terms in the lower house of congress. He is preeminently a product of American democracy and his career has been marked by all the vicissitudes of a courageous, ambitious youth struggling for mastery in American life.

Mr. Burrows is a native of Pennsylvania, though the state of Michigan, into whose citizenship he was adopted while a mere youth, has been the theater of his larger activities and promotions. He was the youngest of a family of eight children, seven of whom were boys, and was born on January 9, 1837, at Northeast, Erie county, Pennsylvania, of New England ancestry. His parents removed to Ashtabula county, Ohio, when he was still very young, and there he received the rudiments of his education in the district schools. He began the struggle of life as a teacher at the age of sixteen, and later attended the Kingsville academy, cooking his own food, and accepting any kind of work that the institution had to offer in exchange for his tuition. It was at this period that he reached the determination to study law, and this he decided to do in the intervals of teaching and academic study. At nineteen years of age he was made principal of Madison seminary. Lake county, Ohio, and during these months of study and teaching he kept his law books under the light of the evening lamp, and often studied them until late in the night. His singleness of purpose and studious habits knew no abatement, and in the course of time, while principal of the Union school at Jefferson, Ohio, he was registered as a student in the law office of Cadwell & Simonds, who continued his preceptors until his admission to the bar in 1858. In 1860, he removed to Michigan, where he took charge of Richland seminary, in Kalamazoo county, and a year later was admitted to the practice of law before the Supreme court of that state. At that time the present city of Kalamazoo was in its infancy, but it soon became the home of the struggling young