Walt Whitman was born May 31, 1819, in the village of West Hills, Long Island, New York, approximately 50 miles east of New York City. He was the second of eight children. Whitman’s father was of English descent, and his mother’s family, the Van Velsor, were Dutch. In early 1822, when Walt was two years old, the Whitman family moved to Brooklyn, which was still a small town. Whitman would spend most of the next 40 years of his life in Brooklyn, which grew into a thriving city during his residence. After attending a public school in Brooklyn, Whitman began working at the age of 11. He was an office boy for a law office before becoming an apprentice printer at a newspaper. Throughout his teens Whitman learned the printing trade while educating
