[3] His father was a Virginia planter, who served as a delegate to the Continental Congress (1774–1777) and who signed the Declaration of Independence.[2] His father also served in the Virginia legislature and as the fifth governor of Virginia (1781–1784) in the years during and after the American Revolutionary War.[2] Harrison's older brother Carter Bassett Harrison represented Virginia in the House of Representatives (1793–1799).[4] William Henry often referred to himself as a "child of the revolution", as indeed he was, having grown up in a home just 30 mi (48 km) from where Washington won the war against the British in the Battle of Yorktown.[5]
Harrison was tutored at home until age 14 when he attended Hampden–Sydney College, a Presbyterian college in Virginia.[2][6] He studied there for three years, receiving a classical education that included Latin, Greek, French, logic, and debate.[7][8] His Episcopalian father removed him from the college, possibly for religious reasons, and after brief stays at an academy in Southampton County, Virginia, and with his elder brother Benjamin in Richmond, he went to Philadelphia in 1790.