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The early signs of promise, which he gave, were the means of opening for him the path to scientific culture. His uncle, being made deacon at Wesen, left Wildhaus in 1487, and took the boy with him.

Through Rappersweil, where he preached his first sermon; through Wildhaus, where he read his first mass, he passed on towards the close of the year, to his new home. Glarus, the chief town of the canton, was inhabited by an active, intelligent population, full of energy and independence.

A brother of the bailiff, Bartholomew Zwingli, was chosen by the burghers of Wildhaus, who a short time before had separated from the mother-church of Glarus, as the first pastor of the new congregation. The mother also had a brother of the clerical order, John Meili, abbot of Fischingen. A pious and friendly man, he loved the children of his sister, as if they were his own.

Near the source of the river Thur, in Wildhaus, a mountain-village of the Toggenburg, lived the bailiff Ulric Zwingli, with his wife Margaretta Meili, in moderate circumstances and universal esteem. Eight sons and two daughters were the fruit of their marriage. The third of these sons, born on the first of January 1484, seven weeks after Luther's birth-day, received the name of his father.