Early Life
John Joseph Pershing was born on a farm near Laclede, Missouri, to businessman John Fletcher Pershing and homemaker Ann Elizabeth Thompson. He also had five siblings: brothers James (b.1862) and Ward (b.1874), and sisters Mary Elizabeth (b.1864), Anna May (b.1867) and Grace (b.1869); three other children died in infancy. When the Civil War began, his father worked as a sutler for the 18th Missouri Volunteer Infantry, but did not serve in the military.
John J. Pershing attended a school in Laclede that was reserved for precocious students who were also the children of prominent citizens. Completing high school in 1878, he became a teacher of local African American children.
In 1880, Pershing entered the North Missouri Normal School (now Truman State University) in Kirksville, Missouri. Two years later, he applied to the United States Military Academy. Pershing later admitted that serving in the military was secondary to attending West Point, and he had applied because the education offered was better than that obtainable in rural Missouri.
Read more about this topic: John J. Pershing
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Although good early childhood programs can benefit all children, they are not a quick fix for all of society’s ills—from crime in the streets to adolescent pregnancy, from school failure to unemployment. We must emphasize that good quality early childhood programs can help change the social and educational outcomes for many children, but they are not a panacea; they cannot ameliorate the effects of all harmful social and psychological environments.”
—Barbara Bowman (20th century)
“I have no doubt that they lived pretty much the same sort of life in the Homeric age, for men have always thought more of eating than of fighting; then, as now, their minds ran chiefly on the “hot bread and sweet cakes;” and the fur and lumber trade is an old story to Asia and Europe.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)