We loved those Puritan parents with a fervor that could hardly be surpassed." Added insight into Abbott's upbringing and subsequent character and personality can perhaps be gleaned from a remark of one of the townsmen about his father: "Squire Abbot has a remarkable faculty for being happy." All of Squire Abbot's five sons attended Hallowell Academy, graduated from Bowdoin College (Jacob in 1820 at the age of seventeen), studied theology at Andover Seminary, and became teachers and ministers. It was during his years at Bowdoin that Jacob Abbott added a second t to the family name.
After completing his theological studies at Andover in 1824, Abbott began teaching at Amherst College. In 1925 he was made a professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at the age of twenty-two. Although Abbott's first work was as a teacher, his son Lyman believes there is evidence that Abbott's thoughts turned toward writing when he was in college, and it is known that he belonged to a secret literary society while he was at Andover. His earliest work, Conversations on the Bible, was published in 1829, and fifty years later when he died in 1879, it is estimated by his bibliographer Carl J.
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