De Russy, René Edward, 1790-1865

Edward De Russy was born into a family of ethnic French planters in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) on February 22, 1789. Two years later, soon after the birth of his younger brother Lewis, the De Russy family fled the violence of the slave revolution and settled in Old Point Comfort, Virginia.

At the age of 18, De Russy enrolled in the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York on March 20, 1807; he graduated on June 10, 1812, at the bottom of his class.

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