Early Life
DesBarres, who is seen as having lived through important changes in Nova Scotia's history, is thought to have been born in Basel, Switzerland and was a member of a Huguenot family. His parents were Joseph-Leonard Vallet DesBarres and Anne-Catherine Cuvier and he was the eldest of their three children. DesBarres read mathematics and art at the University of Basel, studying under John and Daniel Bernoulli. Upon the completion of his studies he left for There he enrolled at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. It was there that DesBarres trained to become a military officer, and studied military surveying. His training would also benefit him later in life for surveying, map making,and coastal charting. In 1756 he was commissioned into the Royal Americans (the 62nd Foot later known as the 60th Foot).,
Read more about this topic: Joseph Frederick Wallet DesBarres
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)