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John Joseph Pershing was born on 13 September 1860 near the frontier town of Laclede, Missouri. His father, John Fletcher Pershing, left the Pennsylvania farmland to seek a new life with the booming railroad industry.
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Son of the American Revolution - Descendant of Frederick Pershing. He was the son of Joseph Pershing (1810-1871) and Elizabeth Davis Pershing (1825-1889) whose places of burial are unknown as of March 2015. On March 22, 1859, he married Ann Elizabeth Thompson at Laclede County, Missouri.
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Pershing was born the first of nine children in September 1860 to farmer John Fletcher Pershing and homemaker Ann Elizabeth Thompson. As a teenager, he had to take care of the home and attend school while his father worked as a traveling salesman. In 1880, this brilliant student graduated from Kirksville Normal School with a Bachelor of Science deg...
Pershing started his career serving in the Sixth Cavalry, fighting Native Americans to protect the white settlers. He fought the Geronimo-led Apache in New Mexico and Arizona and he learned Apache dialects and Plains sign language. Pershing taught at the University of Nebraska and used the opportunity to get a law degree in 1893. He was promoted to...
The First World War started after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in 1914, and the United States did not join the war until 1917. Pershing was appointed commander of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), the U.S. military troop sent to Europe by then-U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. Hew was also promoted from Major General...
In 1919, General Pershing was honored by Congress with the rank of “General of the Armies.” This special honor allowed him to be on “active duty” for the rest of his life and continue to be available for assignments. He was the first American to be bestowed such an honor, although, in 1976, U.S. President Gerald Ford promoted George Washington, our...
In 1905, Pershing married Helen Frances Warren, the daughter of powerful U.S. Senator Francis E. Warren, a Wyoming Republican. By Helen, he fathered four children: Helen, Anne, Warren, and Mary Margaret. On August 27, 1915, his wife and three daughters were killed in a fire incident at their home at the Presidio in San Francisco. It is reported tha...
General Pershing died on July 15, 1948, of congestive heart failure at age 87 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He was laid in state at the United States Capitol rotunda and given a state funeral. The general was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Pershing’s greatest accomplishment was the formation of the American Expeditionary Forces, without his military brilliance and involvement of the Americans in the first world war, the European allies could have been defeated. This American hero mentored officers who became significant figures in the Second World War such as future President Harry S...
Pershing’s son Colonel Francis Warren Pershing served during the Second World War. Warren’s sons John and Richard also served in the Vietnam War; unfortunately, Richard was killed in action on February 17, 1968. Pershing is the only person in the history of the United States to earn the rank of General of the Armies while still alive. The rank, whi...
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From 1914 to 1916 he commanded the 8th Infantry Brigade in San Francisco, where, in 1915, his wife and three daughters died in a tragic house fire. In October of 1917, Pershing was promoted to the rank of General, and led the American Expeditionary Forces in France at the start of World War I.
General of the Armies John Joseph Pershing GCB (September 13, 1860 – July 15, 1948), nicknamed " Black Jack ", was a senior American United States Army officer. He served most famously as the commander of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) during World War I from 1917 to 1920.
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- Arlington National Cemetery
- 1877–1924
- General of the Armies
HE STOOD, THE GENERAL STORE--POST OFFICE OWNER John Fletcher Pershing of Laclede, Linn County, Missouri, for the Union. As a young man he had taken rafts of lumber down the Mississippi to New...
Apr 16, 2024 · When he was only three years old, a band of Confederate sympathizers raided Laclede, Missouri, harassing and threatening anyone supporting the Union, including John’s father, John Fletcher Pershing.
