David Glasgow Farragut

He was born James Glasgow Farragut at Lowe's Ferry on the Holston, the son of a Menorcan sea captain who had fought in the Revolution and a North Carolina woman of Scotch-Irish descent. At four he made his first voyage, a 1,700-mile flatboat trip to New Orleans, where his mother died of yellow fever. Navy officer David Porter took the boy in, and James took Porter's first name in return. He was a midshipman at nine, a prize master at eleven, and wounded and captured at Valparaiso in 1814.

What the plaque says

David Glasgow Farragut 1801-1870 A native of Stony Point (Low's Ferry) David Farragut moved New Orleans at the age of three. At the age of ten, he began a career with the U.S. Navy; ca. 1827, pioneered a school for seamen; 1841, improved hoisting machinery for ammunition; 1850-52, wrote the official book of ordinance regulations; hero of the Civil War battles of New Orleans, Port Hudson, and Mobile. On July 26, 1866, David G. Farragut became the first admiral in the history of the U.S. Navy.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• American Museum of Science and Energy — 10 mi
  The Oak Ridge museum that opened in 1949, when the Manhattan Project city's gates opened, in a town whose Black workers were housed in the Gamble Valley hutments.
• Blount Mansion — 15 mi
  The 1792 frame house of William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory, Knoxville's only National Historic Landmark, where the people he enslaved are named.
• Green McAdoo Cultural Center — 15 mi
  The 1935 school in Clinton that sent twelve Black students down Foley Hill to desegregate Clinton High School in August 1956, now a museum with bronze statues of the Clinton 12.
• Beck Cultural Exchange Center — 16 mi
  Knoxville's Black history museum and archive, opened in 1975 in the 1912 Dandridge Avenue house the community bought for $22,500.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Campbell's Station — steps away
• Archibald Roane — steps away
• States' View — 4.7 mi
• Freels Bend Cabin — 6.0 mi