page_title: Martin Van Buren
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: Martin Van Buren / Early life and education
caption_attribution_description: English: The Birthplace of President Martin Ven Buren in Kinderhook, New York (circa 1856-1860)
context_page_description: Martin Van Buren was an American statesman who served as the eighth president of the United States from 1837 to 1841. A founder of the Democratic Party, he had previously served as the ninth governor of New York, the tenth United States secretary of state, and the eighth vice president of the United States. He won the 1836 presidential election with the endorsement of popular outgoing President Andrew Jackson and the organizational strength of the Democratic Party. He lost his 1840 reelection bid to Whig Party nominee William Henry Harrison, thanks in part to the poor economic conditions surrounding the Panic of 1837. Later in his life, Van Buren emerged as an elder statesman and an important anti-slavery abolitionist leader who led the Free Soil Party ticket in the presidential election of 1848.
  Van Buren was born into a family of Dutch Americans in Kinderhook, New York; he was the first President to have been born after the American Revolution — in which his father served as a Patriot — and is the only President to speak English as a second language.
context_section_description: Van Buren was born as Maarten Van Buren on December 5, 1782, in Kinderhook, New York, about 20 miles (32 km) south of Albany on the Hudson River.
  His father, Abraham Van Buren, was a descendant of Cornelis Maessen, a native of Buurmalsen, Netherlands who had emigrated to New Netherland in 1631 and purchased a plot of land on Manhattan Island. Abraham Van Buren had been a Patriot during the American Revolution, and he later joined the Democratic-Republican Party. He owned an inn and tavern in Kinderhook and served as Kinderhook's town clerk for several years. In 1776, he married Maria Hoes (or Goes) Van Alen (1746-1818) in the town of Kinderhook, also of Dutch extraction and the widow of Johannes Van Alen (1744-c. 1773). She had three children from her first marriage, including future U.S. Representative James I. Van Alen. Her second marriage produced five children, of which Martin was the third.
  Van Buren received a basic education at the village schoolhouse, and briefly studied Latin at the Kinderhook Academy and at Washington Seminary in Claverack. Van Buren was raised speaking primarily Dutch, and learned English at school; as of 2020, he remains the only President whose first language was not English. Also during his childhood, Van Buren learned at his father's inn how to interact with people from varied ethnic, income, and societal groups, which he used to his advantage as a political organizer. His formal education ended in 1796, when he began reading law at the office of Peter Silvester and his son Francis.
  Van Buren was small in stature at 5 feet 6 inches (1.68 m) tall and affectionately nicknamed "Little Van". When he first began his legal studies, he wore rough, homespun clothing, causing the Silvesters to admonish him to pay greater heed to his clothing and personal appearance as an aspiring lawyer. He accepted their advice and subsequently emulated the Silvesters' clothing, appearance, bearing, and conduct. Despite Kinderhook's strong affiliation with the Federalist Party, of which the Silvesters were also strong supporters, Van Buren adopted his father's Democratic-Republican leanings. The Silvesters and Democratic-Republican political figure John Peter Van Ness suggested that Van Buren's political leanings constrained him to complete his education with a Democratic-Republican attorney, so he spent a final year of apprenticeship in the New York City office of John Van Ness's brother William P. Van Ness, a political lieutenant of Aaron Burr. Van Ness introduced Van Buren to the intricacies of New York state politics, and Van Buren observed Burr's battles for control of the state Democratic-Republican party against George Clinton and Robert R. Livingston. He returned to Kinderhook in 1803, after being admitted to the New York bar.
  Van Buren married Hannah Hoes (or Goes) in Catskill, New York, on February 21, 1807. She was his childhood sweetheart, and a daughter of his maternal first cousin, Johannes Dircksen Hoes. Like Van Buren, she was raised in a Dutch home in Valatie; she spoke primarily Dutch, and spoke English with a marked accent. The couple had five children, four of whom lived to adulthood: Abraham (1807–1873), John (1810–1866), Martin Jr. (1812–1855), Winfield Scott (born and died in 1814), and Smith Thompson (1817–1876). Hannah contracted tuberculosis, and died in Kinderhook on February 5, 1819, at age 35. Van Buren never remarried.
caption: Van Buren's birthplace by John Warner Barber
exif: {}