Charles Lindbergh - Early Years

Early Years

Charles Augustus Lindbergh was born in Detroit, Michigan, on February 4, 1902, but spent most of his childhood in Little Falls, Minnesota, and Washington, D.C. He was the only child of Swedish immigrant Charles August Lindbergh (birth name Carl Månsson) (1859–1924), and Evangeline Lodge Lindbergh (1876–1954), of Detroit. The Lindberghs separated in 1909. Lindbergh, Sr. was a U.S. Congressman (R-Minnesota (6th)) from 1907 to 1917 who gained notoriety when he opposed the entry of the U.S. into World War I. Mrs. Lindbergh was a chemistry teacher at Cass Technical High School in Detroit and later at Little Falls High School, from which Charles graduated in 1918. Lindbergh also attended over a dozen other schools from Washington, D.C., to California during his childhood and teenage years (none for more than a full year) including the Force School and Sidwell Friends School while living in Washington, D.C., with his father, and Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach, California. Lindbergh enrolled in the College of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the Fall of 1920, but dropped out in the middle of his sophomore year and headed for Lincoln, Nebraska, in March 1922 to begin flight training.