The twins were later followed by a younger brother, John. Shapley's father was farmer and teacher Willis Shapley, and his mother was Sarah Stowell, whose ancestors were early settlers in Massachusetts. Shapley's youth was marked by the death of his father and by limited schooling: a mere five grades' worth of education in a local rural school. Shapley received his high school education from the Presbyterian Carthage Collegiate Institute, from which he graduated in two semesters. In addition, during this time Shapley worked as a reporter for the Chanute
Daily Sun in Kansas; he was the paper's city editor by age twenty.
Shapley attended college beginning at age twenty, enrolling in the University of Missouri. He originally planned to study journalism but switched to astronomy when he found out that the university's journalism school was still a year away from opening. By his junior year at the university, Shapley was working as assistant to the director of the Laws Observatory, Frederick H. Seares. Shapley graduated in 1910 with a B.A. in mathematics and physics; the following year he received his M.A.
From the University of Missouri, Shapley went directly to Princeton Observatory as a recipient of the Thaw fellowship in astronomy.
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