Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, 30 years after George

Washington was President of the United States.

 

He lived in West Hills, New York with his working class family. He was named after his father, who was born after the end of the American Revolution and became a farmer because he couldn’t find work as a carpenter. When Walt was four years old, the family moved to Brooklyn. Walt grew up as the first generation of Americans who were born in the newly formed United States, with a stern father and a loving mother, who held a special bond with Walt. When he was twelve, Whitman learned the printer's trade, and  worked as a printer in New York City until a fire in the printing district destroyed the industry. He spent most of his childhood in Brooklyn, and at 17 years old, he began his career as a teacher in a one-room school house in Long Island. He taught until 1841, then turned to journalism as his full-time career. He founded a weekly newspaper, the Long-Islander, edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers and in 1848, left the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to become editor of the New Orleans Crescent.

 

Walt Whitman ‘s Leaves of Grass, made him one of the first American poets to gain international attention.

America "A poem read by Whitman himself!"