Early Life and Career
Hugh Ewing was born in Lancaster, Ohio. He was educated at the U.S. military academy, but was forced to resign on the eve of graduation after failing an engineering exam, which was a major embarrassment to his family. While a member of the cadet corps, he was close friends with future Union generals John Buford Jr., Nathaniel C. McLean, and John C. Tidball. His father appointed Philip Sheridan to the open seat.
During the gold rush in 1849, Ewing went to California, where he joined an expedition ordered by his father, then Secretary of the Interior, to rescue immigrants who were imprisoned in the Sierra by heavy snows. He returned in 1852 with dispatches for the government.
He then completed his course in law and settled in St. Louis. He practiced law there from 1854 to 1856, when he moved with his young brother, Thomas Jr., and brothers-in-law William T. Sherman and Hampden B. Denman to Leavenworth, Kansas, and began speculating in lands, roads, and government housing. They quickly established one of the leading law firms of Leavenworth, as well as a financially powerful land agency.
In 1858, Ewing married Henrietta Young, daughter of George W. Young, a large plantation owner of the District of Columbia, whose family was prominent in the settlement and history of Maryland. He soon afterward took charge of his father's salt works in Ohio.
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