George W. Norris was born in 1861 in York Township, Sandusky County, Ohio. When he was only three years old, both his older brother and his father died leaving his mother, Mary Magdalene Norris, to raise and provide for George and his six sisters. At the time, Mary Norris was forty-six years old and pregnant for the twelfth time. The Norris family farmed and lived in near poverty.
