Winfield Scott was born June 13, 1786, at Laurel Hill, his father’s farm in Dinwiddie County. He was one of four children, and although his father died when he was young, his mother provided for his education. Orphaned at age seventeen, he was well equipped by then to set out on his own. Scott initially pursued law as a career, studying at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg before apprenticing to a lawyer in nearby Petersburg. In 1807 in Richmond, Scott witnessed the former U.S. vice president Aaron Burr stand trial and be acquitted for treason.
In 1808, Scott was commissioned a captain of light artillery, but, hardly a year into his new career, he publicly criticized a superior officer. He was court-martialed and, in January 1810, suspended from all pay and service for a year. In spite of this blemish on his record, he was eventually promoted to lieutenant colonel and posted to the New York frontier just as the War of 1812 was beginning. On October 13, 1812, he won recognition for his leadership at the Battle of Queenston Heights in Ontario, Canada, in which the invading Americans were defeated by the British and their Mohawk allies along the Niagara River. Scott was captured but soon exchanged, and he went on to fight at Fort George (1813), Chippawa (1814), and Lundy’s Lane (1814), where he was severely wounded in the left shoulder. He was promoted to brigadier general and then, later in 1814, earned a brevet promotion to major general.
