Woolsthorpe

Newton was born on Christmas Day, 1642, at Woolsthorpe Manor, near the Lincolnshire
village of Colsterworth, sixty miles northwest of Cambridge and one hundred miles from London. Newton’s father, also named Isaac, died three
months before his son’s birth. The fatherless boy lived with his mother, Hannah,
for three years. In 1646, Hannah married Barnabas Smith, the elderly rector of
North Witham, and moved to the nearby rectory, leaving young Isaac behind at
Woolsthorpe to live with his maternal grandparents, James and Mary Ayscough.
Smith was prosperous by seventeenth-century standards, and he compensated
the Ayscoughs by paying for extensive repairs at Woolsthorpe.
Newton appears to have had little affection for his stepfather, his grandparents,
his half-sisters and half-brother, or even his mother. In a self-imposed confession
of sins, made after he left Woolsthorpe for Cambridge, he mentions “Peevishness
with my mother,” “with my sister,” “Punching my sister,” “Striking many,”
“Threatning my father and mother Smith to burne them and the house over
them,” “wishing death and hoping it to some.”
In 1653, Barnabas Smith died, Hannah returned to Woolsthorpe with the three
Smith children, and two years later Isaac entered grammar school in Grantham,
about seven miles from Woolsthorpe. In Grantham, Newton’s genius began to
emerge, but not at first in the classroom. In modern schools, scientific talent is
often first glimpsed as an outstanding aptitude in mathematics. Newton did not
have that opportunity; the standard English grammar school curriculum of the
time offered practically no mathematics. Instead, he displayed astonishing mechanical
ingenuity. William Stukely, Newton’s first biographer, tells us that he
quickly grasped the construction of a windmill and built a working model,
equipped with an alternate power source, a mouse on a treadmill. He constructed
a cart that he could drive by turning a crank. He made lanterns from “crimpled
paper” and attached them to the tails of kites. According to Stukely, this stunt
“Wonderfully affrighted all the neighboring inhabitants for some time, and caus’d
not a little discourse on market days, among the country people, when over their
mugs of ale.”
Another important extracurricular interest was the shop of the local apothecary,
remembered only as “Mr. Clark.” Newton boarded with the Clark family,
and the shop became familiar territory. The wonder of the bottles of chemicals
on the shelves and the accompanying medicinal formulations would help direct
him to later interests in chemistry, and beyond that to alchemy.
With the completion of the ordinary grammar school course of studies, Newton
reached a crossroads. Hannah felt that he should follow in his father’s footsteps
and manage the Woolsthorpe estate. For that he needed no further education,
she insisted, and called him home. Newton’s intellectual promise had been
noticed, however. Hannah’s brother, William Ayscough, who had attended Cambridge,
and the Grantham schoolmaster, John Stokes, both spoke persuasively on
Newton’s behalf, and Hannah relented. After nine months at home with her restless
son, Hannah no doubt recognized his ineptitude for farm management. It
probably helped also that Stokes was willing to waive further payment of the
forty-shilling fee usually charged for nonresidents of Grantham. Having passed
this crisis, Newton returned in 1660 to Grantham and prepared for Cambridge.