Meade, George Gordon

Extract

Meade, George Gordon (31 December 1815–06 November 1872), soldier and engineer, was born in Cadiz, Spain, the son of Richard Worsam Meade, a merchant and U.S. naval agent, and Margaret Coates Butler. Meade came to the United States at the age of one and a half years with his mother, who established a home in Philadelphia while her husband, caught up in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, languished in a Spanish prison. Released in 1818, Richard Meade eventually moved his family to Washington in an effort to recover a sizable debt owed him by the U.S. government. The claim was disallowed, and as family finances dwindled, George attended a succession of private schools in Philadelphia, Washington, and Baltimore. After the death of Meade’s father, Margaret Meade, seeking the least costly expedient, obtained an appointment for George to the U.S. Military Academy. He entered West Point in September 1831 at the age of fifteen....