Early Life and Career
Jackson was born in Alsace Township in Berks County, Pennsylvania, to a family of Quakers. His father, Isaac Jackson, despite his religious beliefs, had joined the United States Army during the War of 1812, and died six years later from disease contracted while in the service. After the death of his father, young Jackson moved into the household of an uncle in Chester County and was educated in local Quaker schools. As a young man, he worked in a commission warehouse in Philadelphia, but subsequently resigned to become a conductor on the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad. In 1845, he was appointed by President James K. Polk as a lieutenant in the revenue service, and subsequently was sent to Mexico as the bearer of dispatches to General Winfield Scott during the Mexican-American War.
After the war, Jackson returned to Pennsylvania, settling in Pittsburgh. He was actively involved in a local militia company. In the later 1850s into the following decade, Jackson was a manager of a petroleum oil company in the Kanawha Valley region of western Virginia.
Read more about this topic: Conrad Feger Jackson
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