ouisa May Alcott was born November 29, 1832, to Amos Bronson Alcott, called Bronson, and Abigail May Alcott in Germantown, Pennsylvania. She was the second of four daughters: Anna Bronson Alcott was the oldest, born March 16, 1831; Elizabeth Sewell Alcott was born June 24, 1835; and Abigail May Alcott was born July 26, 1840.
Alcott’s parents were New Englanders who were part of the mid-19th century social reform movement, supporting the abolition of slavery—even acting as station-masters on the Underground Railroad—and active in the temperance and women’s rights movements. Bronson was a teaching pioneer whose new methods of educating children often didn’t sit well with the communities in which he taught; he de-emphasized rote learning, used a more conversational, didactic style with his students, and avoided traditional punishment. The school he taught at in Germantown was the third school he had started, this time with aid from a wealthy benefactor who paid the tuition of many of the students. When the benefactor died, the school closed and the Alcotts moved to Philadelphia briefly, where Bronson ran an unsuccessful day school before returning to Boston in 1834 when Louisa was two years old. An idealist, Bronson was capable of ignoring the fact that his family was at times literally surviving on bread and water. Louisa no doubt was thinking of her father when she said many years later, "My definition (of a philosopher) is of a man up in a balloon, with his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth and trying to haul him down.