Adolph Simon Ochs was born on March 12 1858 in Cincinnati, Ohio. At thirteen, having achieved a common school education in Knoxville, Tennessee, he became a grocers clerk in Providence, Rhode Island. At fourteen, his family returned to Knoxville and he became a druggists apprentice. Then he learned the printing trade, and by the time he reached nineteen years old, he was the editor and chief of the Chattanooga Dispatch.