Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson was born January 21, 1824 in born in Clarksburg Virginia. He was the third child of Julia Beckwith Jackson and Jonathan Jackson; he had an older sister and brother. Thomas's sister Elizabeth died at just six years old of typhoid fever on March 6, 1826, while two-year-old Thomas sat by her bedside. His father died of the same disease March 26. Jackson's mother gave birth to Thomas's sister Laura Ann the day after Jackson's father died. Julia Jackson was widowed at 28 and was left with much debt and three young children. She sold the family's possessions to pay the debts. She declined family charity and moved into a small rented one-room house. Julia took in sewing and taught school to support herself and her three young children for about four years. In 1830, Julia Neale Jackson remarried. Her new husband was Blake Woodson, an attorney, who did not like his stepchildren. The following year, after giving birth to Thomas's half-brother, she died of complications, leaving her three older children orphaned.
Jackson was only seven years old when his mother died. He and his sister Laura Ann were sent to live with their paternal uncle, Cummins Jackson, who owned a grist mill in Jackson's Mill. Cummins Jackson was very strict with Thomas, who looked up to his uncle as a schoolteacher. His older brother, Warren, went to live with other relatives on his mother's side of the family, but he later died of tuberculosis in 1841 at the age of 20. Jackson helped around his uncle's farm, tending sheep with the assistance of a sheepdog, tending to his uncles herd of oxen and helping harvest wheat and corn. Formal education was not easily obtained, but he attended school when and where he could. Much of Jackson's education was self-taught. He once made a deal with one of his uncle's slaves to provide him with pine knots to burn, in exchange for reading lessons.
In 1842, Jackson’s carrier in the military began. He was accepted to the United States...