Thomas Stearns Eliot grew up in St. Louis, the gate to the Wild West. His father was a businessman and his mother a former teacher and amateur poet. His family came from New England and their ties to "old" England were strong, which may have been the reason why he later emigrated to England, for his affiliation with the European cultural sphere and his contempt for what he saw as the commercialization of American culture. As the youngest of seven siblings, his early life was deeply affected by this cultural heritage – his family spent their summer holidays on the Atlantic seaboard north of Boston – and by his family’s ties to the Unitarian Church against which Eliot rebelled by studying Eastern religions and later converting to the Anglican church.