ABSTRACT
Early Life George Eastman was born in the small, upstate New York town of Waterville. Both his maternal and his paternal ancestors had arrived from England to settle in New England in the 1630's. From the 1840's, his father, George W. Eastman, operated a commercial business college in Rochester, New York, and commuted to the family home in Waterville; his mother, Maria Kilbourn, cared for her young son and two older daughters. When George was six years old the family removed to Rochester, and in 1862 his father died. Maria Kilbourn Eastman, a devout Episcopalian, had to support her family by taking in boarders. George sought to assist as he could. After seven or eight years of private and public education, George left school at the age of fourteen to work first in an insurance office and later as a bookkeeper in a bank.
