oing, to help in restoring
prosperity to the new nation. A temper naturally adventurous led him to
the border lines of civilization; and it was there, in the region where
North Carolina and eastern Tennessee meet, that the years succeeding the
Revolution appear mainly to have been passed. It was there also that he
met and married his wife, Elizabeth Shine, a native of Dobbs County,
North Carolina, where she was born on the 7th of June, 1765. At the time
of their marriage the country where they lived was little more than a
wilderness, still infested by Indians; and one of the earliest
recollections of the future admiral was being sent into the loft, on the
approach of a party of these, while his mother with an axe guarded the
door, which she had barricaded. This unsettled and dangerous condition
necessitated a constant state of preparedness, with some organization
of the local militia, among whom George Farragut held the rank of a
major of cavalry, in which capacity he served actively for some time.

While resident in Tennessee, George Farragut became known to Mr. W. C.
C. Claiborne, at that time the member for Tennessee in the National
House of Representatives. Mr. Claiborne in 1801 became governor of
Mississippi Territory; and in 1803, when the United States purchased
from France the great region west of the Mississippi River, to which the
name Louisiana was then applied, he received the cession of the newly
acquired possession. This was soon after divided into two parts by a
line following the thirty-third parallel of north latitude, and
Claiborne became governor of the southern division, which was called the
Territory of Orleans. To this may probably be attributed the removal of
the Farraguts to Louisiana from eastern Tennessee. The region in which
the latter is situated, remote both from tide-water and from the great
river by which the Western States found their way to the Gulf of Mexico,
was singularly unfitted to progress under the conditions of
communication in that day; and it long remained among the most backward
and primitive portions of the United States. The admiral's father, after
his long experience there, must have seen that there was little hope of
bettering his fortunes. Whatever the cause, he moved to Louisiana in the
early years of the century, and settled his family in New Orleans. He
himself received the appointment of sailing-master in the navy, and was
ordered to command a gun-boat employed in the