Early Life and Pre-Civil War Career
Townsend received his primary education at The Albany Academy, and his secondary education at the Rev. Dr. Dewey's Boarding School in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. After graduating he attended Union College in Schenectady, New York, but left college before graduating in order to join the board of survey of the Utica and Schenectady Railroad Company.
Townsend entered the United States Navy on August 4, 1837, serving first as a midshipman on the ship John Adams. In 1838 he was ordered to the battleship Ohio, then in each subsequent year to the sloop Falmouth, the steamship Missouri. In 1843 he was promoted to passed midshipman and served on the frigate Raritan, then a year later on the brig Porpoise.
He served in the Mexican-American War from 1846–1847 where he was engaged in the capture of Vera Cruz. He was promoted to first lieutenant in 1850, and resigned from the navy on April 7, 1851.
On June 19, 1850, Townsend married Harriet Munro, the daughter of Nathan Munro and Cynthia Champlin, of Elbridge, New York. The couple had three children; a son, Robert Townsend, Jr., born October 4, 1854, and daughters Mary Walker Townsend, born December 23, 1858, and Elizabeth Munroe Townsend, born July 19, 1860.
Read more about this topic: Robert Townsend (captain)
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, war and/or career:
“In early times, before the floods swept across the world, there was life, albeit odd, as one can see from the fossils of mammoth bones, and there was the regime of Prince Metternich.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“The wind sprang up at four o’clock
The wind sprang up and broke the bells
Swinging between life and death”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“The idea that information can be stored in a changing world without an overwhelming depreciation of its value is false. It is scarcely less false than the more plausible claim that after a war we may take our existing weapons, fill their barrels with cylinder oil, and coat their outsides with sprayed rubber film, and let them statically await the next emergency.”
—Norbert Wiener (1894–1964)
“Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)