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.
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