page_title: Francis Amasa Walker
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Francis Amasa Walker / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Francis Amasa Walker
context_page_description: Francis Amasa Walker was an American economist, statistician, journalist, educator, academic administrator, and military officer in the Union Army.
  Walker was born into a prominent Boston family, the son of the economist and politician Amasa Walker, and he graduated from Amherst College at the age of 20. He received a commission to join the 15th Massachusetts Infantry and quickly rose through the ranks as an assistant adjutant general. Walker fought in the Peninsula Campaign and was wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville but subsequently participated in the Bristoe, Overland, and Richmond-Petersburg Campaigns before being captured by Confederate forces and held at the infamous Libby Prison. In July 1866, he was nominated by President Andrew Johnson and confirmed by the United States Senate for the award of the honorary grade of brevet brigadier general United States Volunteers, to rank from March 13, 1865, when he was age 24.
context_section_description: Walker was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the youngest son of Hanna (née Ambrose) and Amasa Walker, a prominent economist and state politician. The Walkers had three children, Emma (born 1835), Robert (born 1837), and Francis. Because the Walkers' next-door neighbor was Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., the junior Walker and junior Holmes were playmates as young children and renewed their friendship later in life. The family moved from Boston to North Brookfield, Massachusetts, in 1843 and remained there. As a boy he had both a noted temper as well as a magnetic personality.
  Beginning his schooling at the age of seven, Walker studied Latin at various private and public schools in Brookfield before being sent to the Leicester Academy when he was twelve. He completed his college preparation by the time he was fourteen and spent another year studying Greek and Latin under the future suffragist and abolitionist Lucy Stone, and entered Amherst College at the age of fifteen. Although he had planned to matriculate at Harvard after his first year at Amherst, Walker's father believed his son was too young to enter the larger college and insisted he remain at Amherst. While he had entered with the class of 1859, Walker became ill during his first year there and fell back a year. He was a member of the Delta Kappa and Athenian societies as a freshman, joined and withdrew from Alpha Sigma Phi as a sophomore on account of "rowdyism", and finally joined Delta Kappa Epsilon. As a student, Walker was awarded the Sweetser Essay Prize and the Hardy Prize for extemporaneous speaking. He graduated in 1860 as Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in law. After graduation, he joined the law firm of Charles Devens and George Frisbie Hoar in Worcester, Massachusetts.
caption: Walker as a young adult
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