Harris, Frank

James Thomas Harris was born in Galway, Ireland, in 1856, the fourth of five children. After the early death of their mother, Harris was raised largely by his siblings before his father, a commander in the British Coast Guard, sent him to school in Wales. Harris ran away from school in 1871 and sailed to America.

Between 1871 and 1872 Harris worked as a bootblack, construction worker, hotel clerk, and possibly as a cowboy. He traveled from New York to Chicago and ended up in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1872, where two of his brothers had settled. While Harris worked in his brothers' butcher shop and attended lectures at the University of Kansas he met and was influenced by Byron Smith, a promising young classics professor with an interest in Karl Marx. Harris placed enough importance on his association with Smith to change his name as an indication of a sort of rebirth. From that time on he was known as Frank Harris.

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