page_title: William Munroe (pencil maker)
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: William Munroe (pencil maker) / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Monument Square and Mill-Dam Company, Concord , Mass.
context_page_description: William Munroe was a prominent cabinet-maker and pencil manufacturer of Concord, Massachusetts.
context_section_description: Munroe was born on the Seaver Farm in Roxbury in Suffolk County, Massachusetts. His father was a merchant during the time he was growing up.  He received little formal schooling prior to being a teenager. When he was thirteen Munroe worked as a farmhand for a while at his grandparents' farm in Roxbury. Though he liked farming, he figured that there had to be a better way to make a living and desired to learn a skilled trade. At fourteen he became a wheelwright’s assistant. After working at this for a while he quit  and briefly became a cabinet-maker’s assistant. He then worked at various day labor jobs through the age of sixteen. When he was seventeen he became employed with his second cousin deacon Nehemiah Munroe, a cabinet-maker in downtown Roxbury. He was exceptionally sharp at this trade, able to follow the written diagrams of the various pieces of furniture to make them precisely. He had his own innovative ideas and even devised a new method of hanging table leaves from their hinges, drawing a new concept that was followed thereafter.
  Munroe became a journeyman in the shop for about six months after becoming twenty one years old, completing his apprenticeship. In 1800 he left and went to Concord, Massachusetts. There he worked for his older brothers, Daniel and Nathaniel, who were clockmakers. He passed his time by making clock cases. The brothers wrote in Munroe on a contract as a full partner in their business from 1801 though 1804.
caption: Monument Square and the Mill-Dam Company at Concord, Massachusetts
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