Paul Harris, The Adventurous Young Man

Rotary's founder Paul Percy Harris was born on April 19, 1868, in Racine, Wisconsin to George and Cornelia Harris. He was the couple's second child. At age three, when his family fell on hard times, Paul was moved with a sibling to Vermont to live with his paternal grandparents, Howard and Pamela Rustin Harris. He was raised by his New England grandparents with values of tolerance toward all.

He was a mischievous child. He attended primary school in Wallingford and secondary school in Rutland, where he played pranks and skipped class. He also attended Black River Academy in Ludlow but was expelled after only a few weeks.

After secondary school, he enrolled in the University of Vermont in 1886. He was expelled with three others in December of 1886, because of his involvement in an underground society. Harris spent the spring with a private tutor, and in the fall of 1887, he enrolled at Princeton University. Due to the death of his grandfather in the spring of 1888, he did not return to school the following fall. Harris soon moved to Des Moines, Iowa, where he was apprenticed at a local law firm. After completing his apprenticeship, he studied law at the University of Iowa. He graduated with a Bachelor of Law degree in June, 1891.

In his senior year, a former graduate told his class that they should "go to a small town for five years make a fool of themselves, then go to the big city!" Harris decided to hit the road for the entire world.

In 1891, he worked as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.

In 1892, he worked as a manual laborer on a fruit ranch and then worked in a raisin-packing plant. Harris was also a teacher at the L.A. Business College. Then he moved to Denver, Colorado, where he was an actor in a stock company, a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, a cowboy, and a reporter for The Republican. After moving to Jacksonville, Florida, where he worked as a night clerk at the St. James Hotel, a traveling granite/marble salesman.

In 1893, he worked as a reporter on the Washington Star, a cattleman ship going to Europe. While on his first voyage on a cattleman ship, Harris wrote that he first experienced sub-human conditions. He also picked oranges in Florida and moved back to Jacksonville to sell marble granite. His territory included the southern states, Cuba, the Bahamas and Europe.

When he announced that he was going to Chicago to practice law, his employer said, "Whatever the advantages of settling in Chicago may be, I am satisfied you will make more money if you remain with me." Harris replied, "I am sure you are right, but I am not going to Chicago for the purpose of making money; I am going for the purpose of living a life." In 1896, he did go to Chicago to practice law.

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