My background

I, James Johnston Pettigrew, was born on our family's plantation
known as Bonarva. This is in Tyrrell County, North Carolina. I 
was born July the fourth, eighteen twenty eight, the second 
youngest of nine children of which two had died. My Father and 
Mother are Ebenezer and Ann Blount Shepard Pettigrew. 

I have two sisters and four brothers. At the age of thirty five my 
Mother died of complications from the birth of my youngest sister.
I spent much of the first seven years of my life living with my 
Aunt Mary Shepard in the town of New Bern. She treated us as her 
own. My two sisters called her "Mother", but I never did. My Uncle 
John was more like a Father to me then my own. But as I became a 
man our relations cooled. 

As a child we could only go home to the plantation in the winter. 
Because our home was in a swampy area it wasn't considered safe to 
be there in the summer. From 1836 to 1843 I attended Bingham Academy 
in Hillsborugh. Then from 1843 to 1847 I went to the University of
North Carolina. I graduated with a perfect academic record.

From 1847 to 1848 I was a Professor at the Naval Observatory. I also 
studied Law under Matthew F. Maury of Baltimore. In 1849 I moved to 
Charleston South Carolina and took up residence. From 1850 to 1852 I 
lived in Europe, and received a degree in civil law from the 
University of Berlin. I then traveled extensively in Germany, France, 
Italy, Spain, and the Austro-Hungrian empire.

In 1853 I returned to Charleston and became junior partner of my
Uncle James Louis Petigrew's law practice. At the same time in
1856 I served one term in the South Carolina General Assembly.
I wrote a celebrated report against the reopening of the foreign
slave trade.

I will write more later to bring me up to the start of war in 
Charleston Harbor.

Johnston Pettigrew