Early Life and Career
Edmund W. Pettus was born in 1821 in Limestone County, Alabama. He was a son of John Pettus and Alice Taylor Winston, brother of John J. Pettus, and a distant cousin of Jefferson Davis. Pettus was educated in local public schools, and later graduated from Clinton College located in Smith County, Tennessee.
Pettus then studied law in Tuscumbia, Alabama, and was admitted to the state's bar association in 1842. Shortly afterward he settled in Gainesville and began practicing as a lawyer. On June 27, 1844, Pettus married Mary L. Chapman, with which he would have three children. Also that year he was elected solicitor for the seventh Judicial Circuit of Alabama.
During the Mexican–American War in 1847–49, Pettus served as a lieutenant with the Alabama Volunteers, and after hostilities he moved to California. By 1853 he had returned to Alabama, serving again in the seventh circuit as solicitor. He was appointed a judge in that circuit in 1855 until resigning in 1858. Pettus then relocated to the now extinct town of Cahaba in Dallas County, Alabama, where he again took up work as a lawyer.
Read more about this topic: Edmund Pettus
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“Yet, haply, in some lull of life,
Some Truce of God which breaks its strife,
The worldling’s eyes shall gather dew,
Dreaming in throngful city ways
Of winter joys his boyhood knew;
And dear and early friends—the few”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)
“The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well. The truth is, many things are worth doing only in the most slovenly, halfhearted fashion possible, and many other things are not worth doing at all.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“I began my editorial career with the presidency of Mr. Adams, and my principal object was to render his administration all the assistance in my power. I flattered myself with the hope of accompanying him through [his] voyage, and of partaking in a trifling degree, of the glory of the enterprise; but he suddenly tacked about, and I could follow him no longer. I therefore waited for the first opportunity to haul down my sails.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)