Life and Early Career
Cadwalader Ringgold was born August 20, 1802 in Washington County, Maryland, at "Fountain Rock", the 18,000-acre (7,300 ha) family estate. His mother was Maria Cadwalader (1776–1811), daughter of John Cadwalader (1742–1786), who was a general during the American Revolutionary War. Some sources spell his first name with two "l"s. His father was Samuel Ringgold, a Maryland politician who later served in the U.S. House of Representatives. He had an older brother, Samuel Ringgold, an army officer called "the father of modern artillery" and who died in the Battle of Palo Alto. Cadwalader was the sixth of 11 children, the youngest child of his mother, who then died. His father remarried and went on to have five more children by his second wife.
Cadwalader Ringgold entered the U.S. Navy in 1819 and commanded the schooner Weazel in action against West Indies pirates during the late 1820s. He became a lieutenant on May 17, 1828 and that year served on Vandalia in the Pacific Ocean. He went on to serve on the Adams in the Mediterranean.
Read more about this topic: Cadwalader Ringgold
Famous quotes containing the words life and, life, early and/or career:
“Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“He was at a starting point which makes many a man’s career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man swings and makes his point or else is carried headlong.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)