The Fortean Society’s lawyer.
Julien Davies Cornell was born 17 March 1910 in Brooklyn to a life of relative comfort. His father was a Wall Street attorney, Edward H. Cornell; his mother was Esther Haviland Cornell, heir to a china fortune. (His family was also related to Ezra Cornell, founder of the NY College by that name.) He had a brother and two sisters, all members of the Society of Friends. Cornell attended Quaker schools, then entered Swarthmore College at age 16—after Fort had published his first two books. It is not know if Cornell read these books at the time—or ever—but his education raised an interest in what would later become Fortean topics: his thesis was titled “science and religion” and he developed “a healthy skepticism for textbooks and authorities, and reverence for he dignity and worth of individual human beings.”
Julien Davies Cornell was born 17 March 1910 in Brooklyn to a life of relative comfort. His father was a Wall Street attorney, Edward H. Cornell; his mother was Esther Haviland Cornell, heir to a china fortune. (His family was also related to Ezra Cornell, founder of the NY College by that name.) He had a brother and two sisters, all members of the Society of Friends. Cornell attended Quaker schools, then entered Swarthmore College at age 16—after Fort had published his first two books. It is not know if Cornell read these books at the time—or ever—but his education raised an interest in what would later become Fortean topics: his thesis was titled “science and religion” and he developed “a healthy skepticism for textbooks and authorities, and reverence for he dignity and worth of individual human beings.”