Page "Margaret Mead" Paragraph 3

Mead, the first of five children, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but raised in Doylestown.

Her father, Edward Sherwood Mead, was a professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and her mother, Emily ( Fogg ) Mead, was a sociologist who studied Italian immigrants.

Her sister Katharine ( 1906 – 1907 ) died at the age of nine months.

This was a traumatic event for Mead, who had named this baby, and thoughts of her lost sister permeated her daydreams for many years.

Her family moved frequently, so her early education alternated between home-schooling and traditional schools.

Her family owned the Longland farm from 1912 to 1926.

Born into a family of varying religious outlooks, she searched for a form of religion that gave an expression of the faith that she had been formally acquainted with, Christianity.

In doing so, she found the rituals of the Episcopal Church to fit the expression of religion she was seeking.

Margaret studied one year, 1919, at DePauw University, then transferred to Barnard College where she earned her bachelor's degree in 1923.