High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! William March was born the eldest son of a poor, itinerant family in and around Mobile, Alabama. His father worked in the lumber industry, which at the time was booming in South Alabama, and was an occasional heavy drinker who had a fondness for reciting poetry (especially Edgar Allan Poe's) at the dinner table. His mother (whose maiden name was Susan March) was probably better educated and taught the children to read and write. Neither of them seemed to have supported young March's literary efforts he later stated he had composed a 10,000 line poem at the age of 12, but had burned the manuscript. Having 10 other siblings, March was afforded no privileges; by the time he was 14 the family moved to Lockhart, Alabama, preventing him from going to high school. Lockhart would later become the imaginary Hodgetown, Pearl County, in The Tallons (1936). Instead, March received occasional schooling probably in one-room schools such as was commonin sawmill towns. He found employment in the office of a lumber mill.