Digges, Thomas Attwood (04 July 1742–06 December 1821), gentleman, confidential agent, ne'er-do-well, and novelist, gentleman, confidential agent, ne’er-do-well, and novelist, was born in Warburton, Maryland, the son of William Digges and Ann Attwood, the owners of “Warburton Manor.” Digges was sent abroad to be educated. Family tradition holds that he attended Oxford University, but his Catholic faith and the absence of his name in university records make this unlikely. In 1767, after being disowned by his family for reasons that are not known, Digges purportedly went to live in Portugal, where he stayed until 1773 or 1774. In a subsequent letter to ...
Article
Digges, Thomas Attwood (04 July 1742–06 December 1821), gentleman, confidential agent, ne'er-do-well, and novelist
David M. Craig
Article
Ingraham, Prentiss (1843-1904), writer and soldier
Randall C. Davis
Ingraham, Prentiss (28 December 1843–16 August 1904), writer and soldier, was born in Adams County, Mississippi, the son of Joseph Holt Ingraham, a minister and writer, and Mary Brooks, the daughter of a wealthy southern planter. Ingraham attended Jefferson College (Miss.) and Mobile Medical College until the Civil War ended his academic career. At the age of seventeen, Ingraham enlisted in Colonel William Temple Withers’s Mississippi Regiment; he later served as a scout commander in a Texas cavalry brigade. At the siege of Port Hudson, Ingraham was wounded in the foot and captured, but he escaped while being transported to a northern prison....
Article
Reid, Mayne (1818-1883), author and soldier
Robert L. Gale
Reid, Mayne (04 April 1818–22 October 1883), author and soldier, was born Thomas Mayne Reid in Ballyroney, County Down, Ireland, the son of Thomas Mayne Reid, a Presbyterian minister, and his wife, whose maiden name may have been Rutherford. Reid studied at the Royal Academical Institution in Belfast from 1834 to 1838 in preparation for the ministry. He quit, opened a day school in Ballyroney, and taught there in 1838 and 1839. From this point on, details concerning Reid’s life are uncertain, because he boasted about himself, much of his fiction is wrongly regarded as autobiographical, and his widow’s biography of him is sometimes vague and inaccurate....
Article
Ruxton, George Augustus Frederick (1821-1848), soldier, adventurer, and author
Mark L. Gardner
Ruxton, George Augustus Frederick (24 July 1821–29 August 1848), soldier, adventurer, and author, was born in Eynsham Hall, Oxfordshire, England, the son of John Ruxton, an army surgeon, and Anna Maria Hay. On 14 July 1835 Ruxton became a cadet at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. After about two years at the academy, Ruxton was apparently expelled and subsequently traveled to Spain, where he participated for a time in that country’s civil war as a cornet of lancers in the British Auxiliary Legion, a unit serving with forces loyal to Queen Isabella II. For his distinguished actions at the Battle of the Bridge of Belascoain, 29 April–1 May 1839, the queen of Spain awarded Ruxton the Cross of the First Class of the National Military Order of San Fernando....
Article
Wallace, Lew (1827-1905), soldier and author
Herbert F. Smith
Wallace, Lew (10 April 1827–15 February 1905), soldier and author, was born Lewis Wallace at Brookville, Indiana, the son of David Wallace, a soldier and later governor of Indiana, and Esther French Test, who died when Lew was only seven years old. His earliest education was unproductive, the boy rebelling against the strictness of a rural schoolmaster for whom, as Wallace described it in his 1906 autobiography, “flogging was a fine art which he seemed fearful of losing.” But his mother encouraged his learning by making available to him Jane Porter’s romantic history ...
Image
Wallace, Lew (1827-1905)
In
Lew Wallace Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-32868).
