William Jennings Bryan was born to Silas and Mariah Bryan on 19 March 1860 in Salem, Illinois. Silas Bryan was a farmer, a Baptist preacher, and a Democratic officeholder. As a young man, he moved from Virginia to Illinois to seek greater economic opportunity. During this period, Illinois was still considered a part of the American frontier--an ever-shifting landscape onto which writers such as Thomas Jefferson, James Fenimore Cooper, and Mark Twain often projected their visions of the political and moral destiny of the nation. Silas Bryan was an active supporter of Stephen Douglas, who famously represented a proslavery view in his debates with Abraham Lincoln, though Bryan's mature writing, in The Commoner Condensed (1902) and elsewhere, supports full citizenship rights for African Americans.
In 1875 Bryan moved to Jacksonville, Illinois, where he finished high school at Whipple Academy and then enrolled at Illinois College. As an undergraduate he distinguished himself with his speaking skills, on one occasion traveling to Galesburg and competing against a young Jane Addams in an oratorical contest.
