Amos Lawrence was born at Groton, Massachusetts, on the 22d of April, 1786.  His ancestor came of a good English family, and was one of the company which sailed from England for the New World under Governor Winthrop, in 1630, and which, according to Grahame, contained “several wealthy and high-born persons, both men and women, who expressed their determination to follow truth and liberty into a desert, rather than to enjoy all the pleasures of the world under the dominion of superstition and slavery.”  This Lawrence settled in Watertown, and was one of the original proprietors of the town of Groton, which was founded in 1655.  Samuel Lawrence, the father of the subject of this memoir, was the fifth in descent from the founder of the family, and was himself a gallant officer of the American army in the War of the Revolution, the close of which found him the possessor of a small farm, which yielded a modest support for his family.

Young Amos was brought up on the farm, with none of the advantages of wealth, and with but a limited education, which he gained at the village schools, and which was seriously interfered with by his delicate health.  He received his final training at the Groton Academy, to which, in after life, he became a liberal patron.  “As we children came forward,” he wrote, late in life, “we were carefully looked after, but were taught to use the talents intrusted to us; and every nerve was strained to provide for us the academy which is now doing so much there.”  Toward the close of the year 1799, when but a little over thirteen years of age, he took his final departure from school, and entered a store in the village of Dunstable, as clerk.

He remained there but a few months, and then returned to Groton, where he obtained a place as apprentice in the store of a Mr. Brazer.  This was the largest establishment in the place, and conducted a very important trade with the country for miles around.  Boston was so far, and so difficult to reach in those days, that Groton came in for nearly all the business of its vicinity which the railroads have now taken to the city.  Mr. Brazer’s establishment, which was known as a “variety store,” came in for the best part of this trade.  Every thing was sold there; “puncheons of rum and brandy, bales of cloth, kegs of tobacco, with hardware and hosiery, shared attention in common with silks and threads, and all other articles for female use.”  Even medicines were sold there; and Dr. Wm. B. Lawrence, the son of our hero, assures us that his father was obliged to sell medicines, not only to customers, but to all the physicians within a circuit of twenty miles, who depended on this establishment for their supplies.  “The confidence in his good judgment,” he adds, “was such that he was often consulted in preference to the physician, by those who were suffering from minor ails; and many were the extemporaneous doses which he administered for the weal or woe of the patient.”