P. G. T. Beauregard - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Beauregard was born at the "Contreras" sugar-cane plantation in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, about 20 miles (32 km) outside New Orleans, to a Creole family. Beauregard was the third child of Jacques Toutant-Beauregard, of French and Welsh lineage, and Hélène Judith de Reggio Toutant-Beauregard, a descendant of an Italian noble family that had migrated to France. He had three brothers and three sisters. Beauregard attended New Orleans private schools and then went to a "French school" in New York City. It was during his four years in New York, beginning at age 12, that he first learned to speak English, as French was his first language.

He trained at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. One of his instructors was Robert Anderson, who would later become the commander of Fort Sumter and surrender to Beauregard at the start of the Civil War. Upon enrolling at West Point, Beauregard dropped the hyphen from his surname and treated Toutant as a middle name, to fit in with his classmates. From that point on, he rarely used his first name, preferring "G. T. Beauregard." He graduated second in his class in 1838 and excelled both as an artilleryman and military engineer. His Army friends gave him many nicknames: "Little Creole", "Bory", "Little Frenchman", "Felix", and "Little Napoleon".