Francis Locke Sr.
Francis Locke was born in 1722 in Ireland. He was the son of John and Elizabeth Locke. When he was still young, the family emigrated to Lancaster, Pennsylvania Colony, where Locke grew up. After his father died in 1744, his mother married John Brandon, who eventually moved the family to Anson County, North Carolina Colony. That area of the county was later split off as Rowan County, North Carolina.
John Locke
In 1647, Locke was sent to the prestigious Westminster School in London under the sponsorship of Alexander Popham, a member of Parliament and his father's former commander. After completing studies there, he was admitted to Christ Church, Oxford, in the autumn of 1652 at the age of twenty. The dean of the college at the time was John Owen, vice-chancellor of the university. Although a capable student, Locke was irritated by the undergraduate curriculum of the time. He found the works of modern philosophers, such as René Descartes, more interesting than the classical material taught at the university. Through his friend Richard Lower, whom he knew from the Westminster School, Locke was introduced to medicine and the experimental philosophy being pursued at other universities and in the Royal Society, of which he eventually became a member.