David Glasgow Farragut, the man who would become the first Admiral in the U.S. Navy and a Civil War naval hero, was born on the fifth of July 1801 “in a log cabin on a 640-acre tract of land on the north bank of the Holston River about fifteen miles southwest of Knoxville,” Tennessee.” (1) His father, George Anthony Magin Farragut, (a fascinating character deserving of a biography of his own), was born on the island of Minorca. He went to sea at a young age and found his way to America in 1776. He served in the American Revolution under Francis Marion, the famed guerrilla leader and American officer who earned the nickname “Swamp Fox.” According to family lore, as captured by David’s son Loyall, George Farragut fought in both the American Revolution and the War of 1812 and is said to have “saved the life of Colonel Washington in the battle of Cowpens.” (2) “By the end of th war, he had risen to the rank of major of horse.” (3)
In 1795, at the age of forty, he married Elizabeth Shine. They moved to Knoxville, Tennessee and began to raise a family. A first son, William, was born in 1797. The family moved to their homestead near Stony Point in 1800 and it was here that David Glasgow was born followed by a sister and brother. The future admiral was called Glasgow by family and friends. (4)
George made what would be a fateful decision to return to the sea. He received an appointment as sailing master with the U.S. Navy on March 2, 1807. Ordered to duty on a gunboat in New Orleans, he decided to move his family to the city by flatboat. In the late summer of 1807, they embarked on a two month journey that began on the Holston River and traveled to the Tennessee, then the Ohio, and finally the Mississippi. (5)
Within a year of settling in New Orleans, Elizabeth would be dead of yellow fever and the family’s lives changed forever.
(1) Schneller, Jr., Robert J., Farragut: America’s First Admiral. (Washington D. C.: Brassey’s, Inc., 2002), 3.
(2) Farragut, Loyall. The life of David Glasgow Farragut: first admiral of the United States Navy Emboying His Jounrals and Letters, (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1882), 5.
(3) Schneller, Jr., Robert J., Farragut: America’s First Admiral. (Washington D. C.: Brassey’s, Inc., 2002), 4.
(4) Ibid., 5.
(5) Ibid., 6.