Petraeus was born in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, the son of Miriam Sweet (née Howell; 1912–1991), a librarian, and Sixtus Petraeus (1915–2008), a sea captain. His father was Dutch, from Franeker, Netherlands, and his mother was American, a resident of Brooklyn, New York. His father had sailed to the United States from the Netherlands at the start of World War II. They met at the Seamen's Church Institute of New York and New Jersey and married. Sixtus Petraeus commanded a Liberty ship for the US for the duration of World War II. The family moved after the war, settling in Cornwall-on-Hudson, where David Petraeus grew up and graduated from Cornwall Central High School in 1970.