Born March 19, 1813,
Lanarkshire, Scotland
Died April 30, 1873,
Africa
David Livingstone was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, on March 19, 1813, to devout but poor parents. The second son of a traveling tea salesman, Livingstone was apprenticed as a “piecer” at ten years of age to work in a local cotton mill. After working from 6:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m., he studied for two hours at night school and then read when he got home. After being promoted to cotton-spinner, Livingstone expanded his studies to religion and medicine. When the night school closed, he read at work by “placing the book on a portion of the spinning jenny, so that I could catch sentence after sentence as I went by.” By tireless self-application, he taught himself Latin, Greek, and mathematics. He was admitted to the University of Glasgow to study Greek and theology, and then went to the University of London to pursue a medical degree. Next, he became a member of the London Missionary Society and was ordained as a minister in 1840.
Livingstone’s original intention was to go to China as a medical missionary but the outbreak of the Opium War between Britain and China in 1839 prevented him, so he chose Africa instead.
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